skunkweed
Pluralskunkweeds (some meanings)
- 1Cannabis with a strong, pungent smell.
Dealers marked up the skunkweed because its smell signaled higher potency.
The apartment reeked of skunkweed long after the party had ended.
Note
A slang name that reuses the skunk-and-weed compound of the American plant name, here for cannabis prized for its pungent aroma. It is sometimes stretched to any especially strong-smelling cannabis. It belongs to casual talk, not to medical, legal or scientific writing, where cannabis is the neutral word. It usually behaves as a mass noun: the room smelled of skunkweed.
- 2Any of several foul-smelling American plants, notably Texas croton (Croton texensis) and sky pilot (Polemonium viscosum).
Botanists catalogued the skunkweed thriving in the dry Texas soil.
The meadow's sweet flowers were spoiled by patches of foul-smelling skunkweed.
Note
A name built on comparison: skunk plus weed, a plant that smells like the animal. Because the label tracks a smell rather than a family resemblance, it is shared by plants of different genera. It works as a count noun for a single plant (a skunkweed) and as a mass noun for a stand of it. The same comparison gives the word its other life as a name for pungent cannabis.
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Origin
A compound of "skunk" and "weed."