Weed in Spanish: Mota, Yerba and the Words Behind American Slang

Say "mota" in Mexico City, "porro" in Madrid or "faso" in Buenos Aires, and the people around you will know exactly what you mean. Spanish carries dozens of words for weed, and every country keeps its own favorites.

Some of those words crossed into English long ago. Marijuana came from Mexican Spanish, and pot and reefer most likely did, too, though the road they took says as much about politics as it does about language.

Key takeaways

• In Mexico, mota has meant marijuana since the late 19th century, a Mexican linguist told AFP.
• Merriam-Webster traces marijuana to Mexican Spanish mariguana or marihuana, a word of uncertain origin.
• Pot may come from Mexican Spanish potiguaya, and reefer probably comes from grifa.
• Mexico banned marijuana in 1920, 17 years before the US Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.
• Spain favors maría, porro and chocolate, while Argentina rolls a faso.

Mota and the Mexican street vocabulary

Ask a friend in Mexico City how to say weed in Spanish, and the answer will almost always be mota. Mexico's underworld has its own lexicon, AFP reported in 2016, when the College of Mexico planned to add dozens of drug slang words to the second edition of its Spanish Dictionary of Mexico, whose first edition in 2010 held about 25,000 words. Linguist Luis Fernando Lara told the agency that Spaniards in the 18th century used mota for the fuzz left over from making linen, and that from the end of the 19th century it meant marijuana.

The same vocabulary covers everything around the plant. A joint is a churro, a hit is a toque, a regular smoker is a pacheco, a moto or a motorolo, someone high is grifo and a pressed brick of flower is a tabique. Spanish has borrowed back, too, since Mexican slang uses the English word pusher for a dealer. English keeps a ladder of its own for being baked, blitzed or zooted, and Mexican Spanish has one just as long.

Mota crossed the border early. Green's Dictionary of Slang finds it in a 1950 guide to American underworld lingo, labeled Spanish-American underworld, and today most Mexicans say mota for weed the way Americans say pot. The same dictionary records black mo, a dark and especially potent variety, from 1972.

Spanish slang for weed, country by country

Spanish slang for weed changes at almost every border. Hierba, often written yerba in the Americas, simply means herb or grass and works nearly everywhere, much like weed and grass in English, while other words belong to one country or region:

Context still matters. In Argentina and Uruguay, yerba usually means yerba mate, the tea people sip all day, so a request for yerba there will most likely get you a gourd and a metal straw. Spain leans on hash words such as chocolate and costo, and a Spanish porro often mixes hash or weed with tobacco. Chile calls a joint a pito, and Colombians once called their export weed marimba, a word tied to the coastal marijuana boom of the 1970s. Even mota keeps its everyday meaning, a speck of dust or fluff, so a sentence about cleaning a sweater can sound funny to a stoner. Anyone who wants the neutral term can use marihuana, the standard spelling in Spanish dictionaries, which works in any country and carries no slang at all.

A word of uncertain origin

The origin of the word marijuana is murkier than most people assume. Merriam-Webster says English borrowed it from Mexican Spanish mariguana or marihuana, of uncertain origin, and it calls the popular María Juana story unsupported, since the marijuana spelling does not appear in Spanish before English used it in the early 20th century. Spanish dictionaries still prefer marihuana or mariguana, so the j spelling is largely an English habit. The oldest known record of the word sits in an 1846 Mexican pharmacopoeia, a reminder that cannabis appeared in Mexican medicine books before it became a political target. One popular verse of the folk song "La Cucaracha," sung during the Mexican Revolution, complains that the cockroach cannot walk without marihuana to smoke.

Politics did the rest. Numerous accounts say the word came into popular usage in the U.S. in the early 20th century because opponents of cannabis wanted to stress the drug's "Mexican-ness," NPR reported in 2013. Mexico had already banned the plant in 1920, 17 years before Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, after hearings in which US Narcotics Commissioner Harry Anslinger testified before Congress. The act taxed every sale and transfer of the plant so heavily that it worked as a national ban, and federal law still spells the word with an h. That history is one reason many states now prefer cannabis, from California's Department of Cannabis Control to Washington State, which swapped marijuana for cannabis throughout its state laws in 2022.

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Pot, reefer and other borrowed words

Marijuana was not the only loan. Merriam-Webster dates reefer, in its marijuana sense, to 1933 and traces it to Mexican Spanish grifa, while pot first shows up in 1938 and is perhaps modification of Mexican Spanish potiguaya, a word for marijuana. Both entries carry a hedge, since slang rarely leaves a paper trail, but the Mexican Spanish link is the best-supported story for each. Mota arrived later, with its first American record in 1950:

Reefer soon gave a title to the 1936 film Reefer Madness, and pot spread so far that most Americans never think of it as a loanword. Of the four, only marijuana made it into federal law, and only mota still sounds like Spanish to most American ears.

Names from the import era

In the 1960s and 1970s, American smokers often named weed after the place it came from, and names such as Acapulco Gold, Panama Red and Colombian Gold became slang in their own right, each one describing both a place and a color. Some of those names still sit on seed menus. Two from our catalog carry that history:

• Acapulco Gold, named after the Mexican beach town, is a sativa-dominant strain at 26% THC with golden-hued buds, citrus, pine and coffee flavors and a 60- to 70-day flowering time.
• Laughing Buddha, a Thai and Jamaican cross at 24% THC, leans 80% sativa and brings an uplifting, cerebral high with lemon and pineapple notes.

Both lean sativa and take their time in flower, 60 to 75 days between them, so they suit growers who like a bright, old-school high.

Phrases you will hear

Pronunciation helps as much as vocabulary. Mota sounds like MOH-tah, porro needs a rolled double r and faso sounds like FAH-so. Slang moves faster than any dictionary, but a handful of phrases turn up again and again in Mexican, Spanish and Argentine conversation:

• Echar un toque means to take a hit in Mexico.
• Estar pacheco means to be high, and a pacheco is someone who smokes often.
• Liar un porro means to roll a joint in Spain.
• Armar un faso means the same thing in Argentina.
• Andar grifo is an older Mexican way to say someone is stoned.
• Fumar mota is the plain Mexican way to say smoking weed.

Knowing the words does not change the law, and in most of Latin America, buying weed on the street can still mean serious trouble for a visitor. Even Uruguay, which sells legal weed through pharmacies, limits purchases to registered residents.

From mota to marihuana

Weed in Spanish goes by mota in Mexico, maría and porro in Spain and faso in Argentina, while hierba works almost everywhere. English borrowed marijuana from Mexican Spanish and most likely pot and reefer as well, and the politics of the early 20th century fixed the spelling that federal law still uses. Learn the local word, and the conversation gets a lot easier.

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