Cannabis (word)

The plant name Cannabis is from Greek κάνναβις (kánnabis), via Latin cannabis, originally a Scythian or Thracian word, also loaned into Persian as kanab. English hemp (Old English hænep) may be an early loan (predating Grimm's Law) from the same Scythian source.

The Oxford English Dictionary records the earliest usages of cannabis meaning the plant "common hemp, Cannabis sativa" in 1548 and meaning parts of the plant "smoked, chewed, or drunk for their intoxicating or hallucinogenic properties" in 1848. The OED traces the etymology to the New Latin botanical term cannabis – proposed in 1728 and standardized in Carl Linnaeus's (1753) Species Plantarum – from an earlier Latin cannabis, coming from Greek kánnabis.

Herodotus (c. 440 BCE) recorded the use of cannabis in The Histories. "The Scythians, as I said, take some of this hemp-seed [presumably, flowers], and, creeping under the felt coverings, throw it upon the red-hot stones; immediately it smokes, and gives out such a vapour as no Grecian vapour-bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy."

The historian and linguist Douglas Harper gives an etymology of English cannabis from Greek kannabis, from a Scythian or Thracian word, which is also the source for English canvas (viz., hempen fabric) and possibly hemp.

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