BONG

A bong, also commonly known as a water pipe, is a smoking device, generally used to smoke cannabis, tobacco, or other substances. The construction of a bong and its principle of action is similar to that of the hookah, which is also called "water pipe." A bong may be constructed from any air- and water-tight vessel by adding a bowl and stem apparatus (a slide)[3]. The word bong is an adaptation of the Thai word baung (Thai: บ้อง /bɔːŋ/), a cylindrical wooden tube, pipe, or container cut from bamboo, and which also refers to the bong used for smoking. Bongs have been in use, primarily by the Hmong, in Laos and Thailand, for centuries. One of the earliest recorded uses of the word in the West is the McFarland Thai-English Dictionary, published in 1944, which describes one of the meanings of bong in the Thai language as, "a bamboo waterpipe for smoking kancha, tree, hashish, or the hemp-plant." A January 1971 issue of the Marijuana Review also used the term.