Don't Bogart the Joint — Origin of the Slang & Why It's Rude

Last verified: April 2026

What It Means

To bogart a joint means to hog it. To hold it too long. To let it dangle from your lip while telling a story, to forget to pass it, or (worst of all) to re-hit it after you already hit it, before anyone else has gone. Merriam-Webster gives the definition as: "to use or consume without sharing." The word has since expanded to mean hogging anything — the last slice of pizza, the shared aux cord — but its origin is entirely cannabis.

The Actor — Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) was one of the defining leading men of classic Hollywood: Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, The African Queen. His trademark, on screen and off, was a cigarette. Bogart had a very specific habit: he let the cigarette hang from the corner of his mouth, often unused, smoldering, while he delivered whole scenes of dialogue. He rarely actually took a drag during a speech. The cigarette just stayed put, barely touched, burning down on its own.

To anyone watching — especially anyone who had ever shared a joint — the image was comical. All that smoke, wasted. The cigarette glued to his lip. No one else getting to hit it.

The Song — "Don't Bogart Me" (1968)

The slang was coined in 1960s counterculture, likely in Los Angeles, as a memorable shorthand for "don't do what Bogart does to his cigarettes." The key documented moment is a 1968 recording by the Los Angeles band Fraternity of Man. The song was titled "Don't Bogart Me" (also known as "Don't Bogart That Joint") and was written by two of the band's members, Elliot Ingber and Lawrence "Stash" Wagner.

Wagner told the story of how the phrase came to them. In his own recollection: "Elliot turned to me and said, 'Hey man, don't bogart that thing.' I asked what it meant. He said, 'You know, like Humphrey Bogart always had a cigarette in his hand or hanging from his lips.'" The band wrote the song that night. The chorus — "don't bogart that joint, my friend, pass it over to me" — became one of the clearest statements of session etiquette ever set to a melody.

The Movie — Easy Rider (1969)

The song would have remained a moderately well-known rock deep cut if not for Easy Rider, the 1969 counterculture landmark directed by Dennis Hopper and starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson. The film featured "Don't Bogart Me" on its soundtrack during a key cannabis-smoking scene.

Easy Rider made over $60 million on a $400,000 budget, changed American cinema, and introduced the song — and the phrase — to an entire generation that had never heard the words "Bogart" and "joint" in the same sentence. Within a few years, "don't bogart it" had completely escaped the song's specific context and entered general English as a verb. By the 1990s, Merriam-Webster had formalized it.

Why Bogarting Is Specifically Worse Than Just Holding the Joint

A lot of etiquette violations in a circle are forgivable one-offs. Bogarting is singled out for a reason: it combines three faults at once.

• You are burning up other people's cannabis. A joint burns at roughly the same rate whether you're smoking it or not. Every second you hold it without passing is flower turning to ash that you are not actually inhaling. Everyone in the circle is shorted.
• You are breaking the rotation rhythm. Sessions have pacing. A bogarter disrupts it repeatedly, in a way that is impossible to ignore and awkward to correct.
• You are making the circle uncomfortable. No one wants to be the person who says "hey, pass that." The bogarter has put everyone else in a bad social spot.

The Three Kinds of Bogarting

• Distraction bogarting. You took your two puffs, started telling a story, and forgot you were holding a lit joint. This is the most common form and the most forgivable. Everyone does it occasionally.
• Double-dip bogarting. You took your two puffs, exhaled, and then casually took a third because you felt like it. This is less forgivable. It shows you noticed and chose not to pass.
• Dangle bogarting. The full Humphrey. You have the joint clamped in your lip, hands-free, talking through it, unused smoke curling up and away. This is the purest form of the verb, and the most visible.

If You're the Bogarter

First: it happens. Even experienced smokers do it occasionally. If you catch yourself — or someone else points it out — the response is simple. Stop. Pass. A quick "sorry, lost track" is enough. Do not over-apologize. Do not explain at length. Just keep the rotation moving.

If it happens twice in one session, it starts to look like a pattern. Take it as a prompt to check in with yourself: Are you talking too much? Distracted by your phone? Too high to track the joint? Any of those are fixable. Repeated bogarting gets remembered, and people will stop passing to you.

Bogarting Outside the Circle

Because the verb has escaped its original meaning, modern English uses "bogart" for all kinds of hogging — the TV remote, the office printer, the last piece of shared dessert. It is one of the very few pieces of cannabis slang that is equally comfortable in a boardroom or a basement. You can safely use it in front of your grandmother.

See also: the full puff-puff-pass rules, the bogart slang dictionary entry, and the session overview.