“The new underground required a new linguistics. To “broom” meant to travel by air. . . . Money was gold. Eyes meant willingness or enthusiasm. A pad was a bed, therefore someone’s room or apartment. . . . Out of the world became gone. . . . Blow your top became flip your wig, leading to flipped, flipped out, wigged, wig, and wiggy. Knocked out yielded gassed, as in an old-fashioned dentist’s chair. The verb gas gave the noun gas, a delighful experience. . . . Cool and dig served as verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and nouns. . . .

Pod, more commontly pot, first appeared to describe cannabis, standard drug since jazz began in New Orleans, heir to a lengthy list of names: hay, golden leaf, cool green, gage, muggles, [and] mezzirolls (after Chicago jazzman Milton Mezzrow). . . .”

—Ross Russell, from Bird Lives! The High Life & Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker, 1973.