Cashed Bowl vs. Cacked Bowl

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Bryce from San Clemente, California.

Hi, Bryce. What’s up?

What can we do for you?

Well, I’ve got a question. It’s one that’s been puzzling amongst my friend group for quite a while, in terms of which is the proper word. I can tell you the scenario if you’d like.

Yeah, please do.

So when you’re with at least one other person, and you have some sort of smoking device, whether it’s a pipe or another type of device, and when whatever you’re smoking in there is finished, some people say the bowl is cached, and other people say the bowl is cacked. And there’s kind of been like two disciplines of people always arguing that, no, it’s cached, no, it’s cacked. So I’m kind of curious on how that came and which one’s the right word.

Let me clarify a little bit here. So we’re talking about a group of people smoking a bowl together. The laws are different in California, so we all know what you mean. And some people say when that bowl is nothing but ash, that it’s cached. And some people say that it’s cached, C-A-C-K-E-D. Which do you say?

I would say cached. I think they’re actually saying cached, like C-A-C-T-E-D, cached.

Oh, interesting. So either C-A-S-H-E-D or C-A-C-T-E-D or K-E-D. I am 100% sure that it’s C-A-C-K-E-D because we can trace the word cached through a variety of different slang mechanisms back to its point of origin. All right? And we can actually do that with cached as well. So they both are in current use to mean that something is finished, completed, exhausted, done. So they’re both currently used in a variety of contexts to mean that.

Cacked comes ultimately from a word meaning poop or excrement. And so it goes back in both American English and Australian English. It’s particularly common in Australian English to a variety of slang uses, usually cacked out. If something is cacked out, it means tapped out, exhausted, done. You might say that we were out till 3 a.m. I am cacked out. There’s no way I’m going to make it to brunch, right? It just means you’re finished. You’re exhausted. It’s the same exact use that you hear in people who smoke bowls together.

Cashed, more interestingly to me, comes from gambling because you cash in your chips means you are finished gambling. You are done. And we have a huge number of uses of cash in or cash out or just to cash over, I’d say, 150 years easily. All of them referring to giving up or dying or completing or finishing and all of them having to do with like the expiration of the current activity. And by the 1980s, we have in print slang uses of people saying this pipe is cashed. And they’re literally talking about smoking tobacco or they’re talking about smoking marijuana. So it can be either one from completely different origins.

Yes, that’s right. They’re different cultures. So what you’re getting here, Bryce, is two different slang cultures colliding in San Clemente.

Yeah. Oh, that’s pretty crazy.

Right? You know, both people swear that they’re right. So I guess they are.

They’re totally, completely right. And they both have long histories behind them. It’s just, it’s a coincidence, I think, that they sound alike. There they are, right next to each other, having this kind of disambiguation problem.

Well, that’s good to know.

Yeah, I mean, both of them make sense now that you’ve explained them.

Yeah. Okay, well, thank you for that.

Yeah, no worries. Thanks for calling. Really appreciate it. Bye.

I love the idea of a great slang collider on the coast there in San Clemente.

Right. That’s how we power California.

That’s right. It’s a green electricity powered by slang collisions.

Yeah, very green.

Well, what word have you been kicking around with your buddies? Call us, 877-929-9673. Or send us an email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.