Last verified: April 2026
Definition
Baked (adjective) is the middle-intensity cannabis descriptor. Someone baked is more altered than “mildly stoned” but typically less intensely altered than “blazed” or “zooted.” The word implies a bit of cognitive impairment — forgetting what you were saying, repeating a question, laughing at nothing. It is affectionate more often than critical.
Etymology & Origin
The word plays on the culinary sense: something baked has been put in the heat for a while. American cannabis slang adopted it by the 1970s. The high-water mark in cultural usage is the 1998 film Half Baked, written by Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan, which made “baked” the defining cannabis-state word for a generation. The film’s titular pun — “half baked” meaning both “mildly high” and “poorly thought out” — captured the word’s gentle comic register perfectly.
“Baked” and “wake and bake” share the same metaphor. The cooking imagery is the through-line.
Usage
- “I’m baked. Don’t let me drive.”
- “She was so baked she watched the same episode twice.”
- “Half-baked is my ideal Sunday afternoon.”
Register: widely acceptable, mostly affectionate. A bit warmer than “blazed” — “baked” has a kitchen-table quality to it. Grandparents understand it.
Related Terms
See stoned, blazed, and wake and bake.
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