كيف

kīf (keef)

An Arabic Word Circles the Earth

In classical Arabic, as the form kayf, the word means ‘pleasure, relaxation, good humour.’ Only in modern Arabic does it acquire the developed meaning of ‘opiate’ or can it be used as a translation of the English general drug noun, ‘dope.’ Arabic k f, the origin of English kif, is a dialectal variant of classical Arabic kayf, a form of the Arabic triliteral stem k-y-f with the pattern XaXX, root meaning ‘ease of spirit.’

In the 1960s, “dope” villages like Ketama in the Rif Mountains of northern Morocco became one of the first destinations on the famed “Hippie Hashish Trail.” In the Sixties marijuana production there was geared toward making kif—a local mixture of two-thirds chopped marijuana and one-third tobacco, smoked in a sebsi, the region’s traditional long-stemmed wood-and-clay pipe.

In the Maghrebi Arabic of northern Morocco , kif or keef acquired two local meanings: kif is a form of hashish or the mixture of marijuana and tobacco smoked in a sebsi. Kif is created from rubbing the crystals of tetrahydrocannabinol off marijuana bud trichomes with a cheese cloth or silk or through a kifing sieve.

A trichome on a plant is any epidermal outgrowth. A plant hair is a trichome. On a marijuana flower bud, the trichomes are resin glands. Tetrahydrocannabinol is the active chemical in cannabis and is one of the oldest hallucinogenic drugs known. The trichomes of the marijuana buds are resin glands rich in THC. They can be made into kilo-sized bricks of sticky brown hash that keeps better than plain marijuana and is denser, more potent and easier to transport. In the Rif (reef) mountains of northern Morocco (probably the origin of the term reefer for marijuana cigarettes), the plant is mainly grown for this use. In some American use, kif refers to uncompressed hashish powder.

         

           Kif as a brown powder                                  Kif as a “brick” or “loaf.”

 

Kif in Other Languages

French

In modern teenage Street French, le kif has the slangy meaning of interest, hobby, addiction, what somebody loves to do.

Manger des tartes aux poireaux, c’est mon kif ! “Eating pear tarts is my weakness!”

Kiffer has become a verb too. Je kiffe cette meuf ! (I love this girl)

Un vrai kiffeur is ‘a true stoner.’

Ça, c’est très kif. ‘That’s cool, that is.’

Kif-kif is a French slang adjective.

Le beurre, la margarine, c’est kif-kif, n'est-ce pas? ‘Butter, margarine, it’s all the same, isn’t it?’

But this adjective may derive from a different Arabic term. Kif-kif in Arabic means ‘so-so.’

 

German

Kiffen is a modern slang German verb.

Dude A: Rauchen Gras?
Dude B: Ja! Ich kiffe gern!

Ich bin ein Kiffer. ‘I smoke pot.’

Du bist ganz gekifft. ‘You are stoned out of your gourd.’

 

English

Kiffer has become a street putdown in North American English. Kiffer is a lowlife thief who steals other people’s stashes or just generally can’t be trusted. “There’s a pussy-crazed sucker dude born ever minute. How else do you think a kiffer like Brandi finds a place to sleep every night?" Kiffers are often crystal meth addicts and whores.

 

three-piece Moroccan sebsi pipe for smoking kif

 

Warning for Mellow Dudes

For all you cool dudes and dudettes out there, remember that marijuana smoke is just as toxic as cancerous tobacco smoke. Lung cancer, throat cancer, lip cancer, esophageal carcinoma, stomach rot: many horrors lurk in wait for lifelong pot smokers. If you smoke dope for 25 years, you end up stupider and more paranoid than when you began. Scientific studies clearly demonstrate that your chances of cancer vault through the roof. That’s science by the way, not dopers’ gossip. Get mellow with those stats, morons.

As for those dopers who bray about their right to smoke whatever they like? It sure is. Just as it is their right to die coughing their lungs out and begging the rest of Canadian taxpayers to pay their medical bills. I say: Let loser dopers puke to death in the street. Don’t crawl to my door, begging for surcease from cancer pain. No way, dude. That ain’t mellow.

column copyright © 2010 William Gordon Casselman