Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

Humans have been smoking tobacco in one form or another for thousands of years. The Spanish, who borrowed tobacco from the Caribbean natives, imported the leaf to Europe, and through European cultivation and trade, tobacco is now a global commodity.

The word tobacco probably comes from the Taino, a Caribbean people whom 16th century Spaniards discovered rolling dried leaves of the plant, burning the ends and inhaling the smoke.

Before too many decades had passed, Europeans were smoking tobacco in pipes and as cigars. The origin of the word cigar has been disputed. One theory has the term coming from cigarra, the Spanish word for cicada, an insect whose leaflike wings are said to resemble a rolled cigar leaf. Others favor the notion that the word comes from the Mayan verb sicar, meaning, "to smoke."

In any case, the French turned the word into a diminutive in the early 1800s: cigar-ette, or "little cigar." Throughout the 1800s, Americans rolled their own cigarettes, but by the 1880s, machine- rolled smokes were becoming available.

These were subjected to a variety of 20th century slang terms. Cigar smokers, considering them effeminate, called factory cigarettes "pimp sticks." Other monikers for boxed cigarettes included skags, weeds, butts, and fags, from the older British English word meaning "burning ember." As concerns arose about the health effects of tobacco consumption, cigarettes acquired the moniker "coffin nails."

Radio Script > Tobacco Words