What does OG mean?

According to Urban Dictionary’s most popular definition, OG is a simple abbreviation that “used to mean Original Gangster.” It has since been further co-opted to mean simply “original” or “old school.”

What does it mean to call someone or something “OG”?

The term and slang “OG” or “O.G.” is a noun which originated in Los Angeles, California, circa the ’70s. The word was re-popularized by Ice-T when he released his 1991 album OG Original Gangster. OG means and stands for original gangster. An OG is someone who has been around, a knowledgeable old school gangster. Nowadays, OG is used to mean original. LA rap group Cypress Hill coined “OG Kush” as a name for a strain of weed in the ’90s.

According to Urban Dictionary’s most popular definition, OG is an abbreviation of the words ‘Original Gangster’, which is what the term meant at first. Since then however, it has also been used to simply mean that something or someone is ‘original’.

Did Ice-T invent the term OG?

echnically, no, he didn’t. But he might be the first person people usually reference when using the term. Calling something or someone OG (or O.G.) dates back to the early 90s, around the same time Ice-T released his fourth studio album, O.G. Original Gangster in 1991. The album went to number 15 on the Billboard 200 chart and remains Ice-T’s most successful record to date.

What about OG Kush?

Because ‘OG’ can be used in many different situations, you might have also heard someone using the term when talking about strains of weed. OG Kush is a popular strain which, according to Wikileaf, also draws its name from ‘Original Gangster’ due to its “status as an old-school building block strain.”

Other potheads also refer to OG Kush as ‘ocean grown’ weed when it originates from the coast of California.

What does “OG” mean when talking about weed?

With 5,000 years of history that’s spread around the globe, cannabis culture has developed a rich, multilingual lexicon to describe the cannabis plant and the wealth of human experience surrounding it. But with such a varied expanse of lore to draw upon, the origins of many words and expressions in the dank dictionary are matters of contention, subject to ongoing debate.

A prime example of this phenomenon can be found with the term OG — you know, as in OG Kush. But what does OG mean? Although the initials “OG” are commonplace in marijuana subcultures, what they stand for is largely a matter of who you ask. Most often you’ll hear one of two popular theories, but there are several more. Outside of pot culture, there are even more possible definitions for OG. 

So, what does OG truly stand for? We’ll leave that decision to you, curious reader. But here’s a breakdown of its different definitions and the lore that fuels its contextual popularity.

Cannabis Strains with the OG moniker

Generally, when it comes to cannabis, OG refers to OG Kush. Just like the initials that make up the name of the strain, the lineage of this cultivar is a point of contention between two schools of thought, depending on what part of California you find yourself in. The Northern California contingent supports the theory that OG Kush is descended from Afghani kush seeds smuggled into the US and grown in the Lost Coast. Once in its new environment, the strain expressed distinctly potent and flavorful traits in the Emerald Triangle’s favorable climate. 

SoCal boosters favor the idea that OG Kush is a hybrid of Chemdawg, Lemon Thai, and Pakistani kush landrace strains that was developed and popularized by San Fernando Valley indoor growers.

But even these two origin stories for OG Kush aren’t unchallenged. Another version of the lineage holds that the strain was bred in Florida, crossing a Northern California strain with a Dutch Hindu Kush. 

Whatever the strain’s family tree may be, after nearly three decades on the market, OG Kush has spawned literally dozens of offspring varieties as breeders blend its superior traits with other genetic lines. Many of these strains with OG Kush parentage carry the OG sobriquet, including Sex OG, Comatose OG, Zombie Killer OG, and more.

OG Kush also supplied the genetics for popular strains including Headband and Girl Scout Cookies (oops, I mean GSC!). Other growers have hunted and pulled distinct phenotypes of OG Kush, isolating SFV OG and Tahoe OG, among others.

There are even more meanings for the initials OG outside the cannabis world, too. Probably one of the most commonly used definitions of OG is simply: “original.” Similar to that connotation, OG means original gangster, indicating a veteran or the first in one’s field — someone who’s been doing something for a long time.

One delightfully British definition for what OG means maintains that the initials stand for “old git,” meaning an annoying, unpleasant, incompetent, silly, or senile person. An example of this use of the term in a sentence might be: “I can’t believe what the OG in the White House is up to this time!”

Like most cannabis stories, the first rumor about OG cannabis takes us to Northern California. The story goes back to the early 1990s when a legacy weed grower had been cultivating a particularly pungent strain of Kush originally bred in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley. One day, the farmer had a chance encounter with a local man bragging about some really good bud. After the grower saw – and smelled – his new friend’s weed, he immediately recognized it as the very same strain he was growing. When the stranger boasted that the cannabis was so good because it was “mountain grown,” the knowledgeable cultivator politely corrected him, saying that it was actually “ocean grown,” thanks to the strain’s birthplace on the Pacific Coast.

As legend has it, that meeting (and the subsequent smoke session) led the mountain grower to rename his Kush after the coincidental correction. And as the bud grew more popular, the story suggests that the name had so much sticking power that it not only moved around the Emerald Triangle and Northern California, back to the strain’s SoCal birthplace in the San Fernando Valley,