When, and how, did "Bogart" come to mean "hog".?

Question

When I was a kid, it was popular to say, "Hey, don't 'Bogart' that". Meaning, "quit hogging that, share some".
Was it a Mid-west thing? - I was a kid in Duluth, Minnesota.

Answer 1

Humfrey Bogart used to double and triple drag on his cigarettes. People who smoke dope started to use the term to mean double and triple toking on a joint. ( hogging it)

Answer 2

Best I can tell, I heard it first in a song, in the 70's by, I think, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show.

The lyric went something like "Don't bogart that joint, my friend. Pass it over to me."

I can't make any heads or tails of how the writer of that line came up with that meaning. I am very familiar with the work of the actor, Humphrey Bogart, and I don't recall anything in his films or his life that gives me any clue.

I am reading the other comments about how he holds his cigarettes in the movies, but, in the films of the 30's through the 50's, cigarettes where such a common prop that I don't think anyone can make a case that Humphrey Bogart held his any different than any other actor. Of couse I may be wrong.

What I'd like to see is if anyone can find a reference to this terminology BEFORE that song.

Lets see if somone else can make the link.

Answer 3

I always figured it had something to do with Humphrey Bogart, but in the process of searching, I found this: "I saw on Urban Dictionary: "bogart" has nothing to do with Humphrey Bogart. All such definitions are merely passed along out of error. At Folsom prison in California the habit of putting your arm around the food to keep others from takin it was called "bowlguarding". From Folsom it spread to other prisons and into the general population. This expression compressed to "bogart" and perfectly extended to hogging a marijuana joint. It is a prison term and much precedes the song where it first became commonly heard outside of California." ~copy/pasted from http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/317475

Answer 4

I'm from Wisconsin. It wasn't used when I was a kid. I don't think I started hearing it until around the 90's.

I just searched for it, and found this:

slang verb) To keep something all for oneself, thus depriving anyone else of having any. A slang term derived from the last name of famous actor Humphrey Bogart because he often kept a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, seemingly never actually drawing on it or smoking it. Often used with weed or joints but can be applied to anything.

To keep a spliff to oneself to oneself, especially while hanging from your mouth. From actor Humphrey Bogart's trademark cigarettes, held in lips or hand, but rarely actually smoked.

Answer 5

I grew up in Boston.

"Bogart" was a term used in smoking pot when I was a teenager, as in "Don't Bogart that joint!" and meant don't hog that thing for yourself.

I am assuming it comes from the way Humphrey Bogart would hang on to the cigarette he was smoking like it was a matter of life and death to him - which in the end it was - he died of lung cancer.

Answer 6

No, it was a world wide thing. Bogart aways had a smoke in his mouth in the movies. He was aways smoking. He died from cancer of the lungs. However, that is how the saying got started, "don't bogart that joint"!

Answer 7

I think it is a mid west thing but came from the old old Bogart movies if you watch you see how slowly he hits his cigarette and thats where it came from.

Answer 8

I first heard it on Beavis and Butthead

Answer 9

I STILL use it! Just because...

Not sure where it came from...