A woman in Indianapolis, Indiana, says her father regularly used the phrase out in the giggle weeds, meaning out in the middle of nowhere or off the beaten path. Giggle weed is slang for both marijuana and jimson weed, a naturally growing highly dangerous and hallucinogenic plant which resembles morning glory. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Giggle Weeds”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Maria Howard, and I’m calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.
Well, hello, Maria. Welcome to the show.
What can we do for you, Maria?
Well, my father always used to use this word starting when we were kids, and he always used to say, out in the giggle weeds. And none of us in our family, my siblings or my mother, could ever figure out what giggle weeds meant, other than just kind of out in the middle of nowhere.
So I was interested in finding out about the meaning of giggle weeds and where it came from and who uses that word other than my dad.
In terms of who uses giggle weeds, I don’t hear it that much, but we do find instances of it from time to time, and it means sort of what you were describing. You’re just out sort of in the boonies. You’re lost in the underbrush or something like that. Out of the Tuleys in some parts of the country.
I know that it was in a movie about motocross racing called On Any Sunday back in 1971. There’s a reference to guys on motocross bikes taking a shortcut through the giggle weeds if they get panicked and accidentally go off the road. So you do see it from time to time, but it’s pretty rare.
The other question is, what is a giggle weed?
Yeah.
Do you have any thoughts about that?
I have no clue. None. None.
Okay.
So you sound pretty innocent. I mean. That’s a good thing, Maria.
Yeah.
I mean, giggle weeds in the past has referred to either marijuana or jimson weed. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with jimson weed or have seen it around. It’s all over Southern California. I run into it all the time when I’m hiking.
Well, it’s in large parts of the country, right?
Yeah.
It is literally a weed. It’s an unwanted pest.
Yeah, it’s a weed with these really jagged big leaves, and it’s got beautiful flowers on it, beautiful blossoms. It looks sort of like giant morning glories, but it’s the datura group of plants, and it’s really hallucinogenic, and it’s really actually dangerous. It’s really, really dangerous. People have died from making tea out of the leaves or chewing them. Or eating the seeds or smoking the leaves.
Yeah.
And it’s a poison, but it’s a hallucinogenic. So people sometimes take that chance.
Right. So much to their detriment.
Right. That’s interesting.
I tried to guess what giggle weeds meant. And the only thing I could come up with in my imagination was somehow, you know, some young couple having a rendezvous out in the middle of nowhere. And, you know, I don’t know, the kids giggling or the people meeting giggling, kind of like in a lover’s lane situation. So that’s the only thing I could think of.
And there may be some overlap there, too.
Yeah, it’s charming.
Yeah, exactly. It’s charming.
But both meanings of the word giggle weed, the marijuana and the jimson weed, come up in early police documents where they talk about all the names for this. So the earliest uses we know are of jimson weed or marijuana being used as a party drug, basically.
Yeah, the earliest use that I know, by the way, is from Indianapolis, which is where you are, right?
Oh, yeah.
It may be earlier than that. It probably is. But so far, the earliest that I know of in print is from 1931 in the Indianapolis Star. They’re describing two drunk guys who are rousted by the police. And the line goes, they were gazing at the moon from the Google Weeds under the bridge.
I tend to use that word a lot, and people kind of give me an odd look and say, giggle weeds, what’s that? I have no idea, but now I do.
If you listen to the show, Maria, you know that our advice usually is to keep on using the expressions, even if people around you don’t know them. This is how we hang on to our heritage.
Exactly, and I love to kind of keep those words alive.
Please do, Maria. You sound like our people.
Thanks for calling.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, we really do. We appreciate it.
Take care now.
Yeah, okay.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
All right, bye-bye.
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