Cannabis glossary

64 words from labels, lab sheets and dispensary menus, in plain English. Every definition is about the product, the label or the chemistry; none of them tells you what something will do to you.

Product forms · Label numbers · Terpenes · Lab-sheet words · StashLog words

Product forms

• Flower
  The dried, cured buds of the plant, sold by weight. It is what most people mean by a jar.
• Pre-roll
  Ground flower rolled in a paper and sold ready to light. Some are infused with concentrate, and the label should say so.
• Concentrate
  Any product made by pulling the trichomes' oil out of the plant and leaving most of the plant behind. Rosin, resin, hash, badder, sugar, diamonds and distillate are all concentrates.
• Cart
  A cartridge: a small tank of cannabis oil that screws onto a vape battery, usually a 510 thread. The oil can be distillate, live resin or rosin, and the label says which.
• AIO
  All-in-one: a disposable vape with the battery and the oil in one piece.
• Rosin
  Concentrate pressed out with heat and pressure. No solvent.
• Resin
  Concentrate pulled out with a solvent. Live resin is made from fresh-frozen plant.
• Live resin
  Resin extracted from plants frozen right after harvest instead of dried and cured first. The freezing is there to keep more of the fresh plant's terpenes through extraction.
• Hash
  Trichome heads separated from the plant and pressed together, the oldest concentrate there is. Ice water hash is made by knocking them loose in ice water and sieving them by size.
• Badder
  A concentrate whipped as it is purged until it sets into a soft, cake-batter texture. It can start as resin or rosin.
• Sugar
  A concentrate that has partly crystallised into a wet, grainy texture, like damp sugar. The liquid around the grains holds most of its terpenes.
• Diamonds
  Crystals of THCa grown out of a concentrate, usually sold in the terpene-rich liquid they grew in, called sauce. The crystals themselves test close to pure THCa.
• Distillate
  Oil refined until it is mostly one cannabinoid, often above 85% THC, with the plant's own terpenes stripped out on the way. Flavour is often added back, and the label should say whether it came from cannabis or from other plants.
• Edible
  Anything you eat that carries cannabinoids: gummies, chocolate, drinks. The label gives the dose in milligrams per piece and per package.
• Tincture
  Cannabinoids dissolved in a liquid, usually oil or alcohol, measured out with a dropper. The label gives milligrams per millilitre or per dropper.
• RSO
  Rick Simpson Oil: a thick, dark whole-plant extract usually sold in an oral syringe. It is named after the man who popularised the method.

Label numbers

• THCa
  THC before it is heated. It is the big number on most flower labels; heat (a flame, a vape, an oven) turns most of it into THC.
• THC
  Delta-9 THC in its active form, already converted before any heat. On raw flower it is usually a small number sitting next to a large THCa.
• Total THC
  What the label works out you actually get: THCa converted, plus any THC already there.
• CBD
  Cannabidiol, the second cannabinoid most labels report. Like THC it has an acid form, CBDa, and many labels print a Total CBD worked out the same way as Total THC.
• CBG
  Cannabigerol, usually present at a percent or less. Its acid form, CBGa, is the compound the plant builds THCa and CBDa out of.
• CBN
  Cannabinol, which forms as THC breaks down with time, heat, light and air. A higher CBN number on an older batch is one sign of how long it has sat and how it was kept.
• CBC
  Cannabichromene, a minor cannabinoid the plant also makes from CBGa. Labs that test for it usually report it well under one percent.
• THCV
  Tetrahydrocannabivarin, a close chemical cousin of THC with a shorter side chain. Most flower carries very little of it, and only some labs report it.
• Total cannabinoids
  The lab's sum of every cannabinoid it measured. Labs differ on whether they convert the acid forms before adding, so compare it only between sheets from the same lab.
• Total terpenes
  Every terpene the lab measured, added up, as a percent of the sample's weight. It only counts the terpenes on that lab's panel, so a short panel reads low.
• mg/g vs %
  Two ways of writing the same ratio: 10 mg/g is 1%. A sheet that says 220 mg/g THCa is saying 22%.

Terpenes

• Terpenes
  Terpenes: the aroma compounds (myrcene, limonene…). Your jar's ring is drawn from them.
• Myrcene
  A monoterpene that smells earthy and musky, with a note of ripe fruit. It is also in hops, mango, lemongrass, bay leaves and thyme.
• Limonene
  A monoterpene that smells like citrus peel. It is the main aroma compound in lemon and orange rind, and turns up in juniper and peppermint too.
• Caryophyllene
  A sesquiterpene that smells like black pepper and cloves, warm and woody. It is also in black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, oregano and hops.
• Linalool
  A monoterpene alcohol that smells floral, like lavender. It is also in lavender, coriander seed, basil and birch.
• Pinene
  A monoterpene that smells like pine needles and resin; labs often report alpha- and beta-pinene separately. It is also in pine trees, rosemary, basil, dill and parsley.
• Humulene
  A sesquiterpene that smells woody, earthy and hoppy. It takes its name from hops (Humulus lupulus), and is also in sage and ginseng.
• Terpinolene
  A monoterpene that smells fresh and piney with floral and citrus edges. It is also in lilac, tea tree, apples, cumin and nutmeg.
• Ocimene
  A monoterpene that smells sweet, green and herbal. It is also in mint, parsley, basil, mango and orchids.
• Bisabolol
  A sesquiterpene alcohol with a light, floral, faintly honeyed smell. It is best known from chamomile and the candeia tree.
• Nerolidol
  A sesquiterpene alcohol that smells woody and floral, like fresh bark. It is also in neroli, ginger, jasmine, lemongrass and tea tree.
• Farnesene
  A sesquiterpene that smells green and woody, like the skin of a green apple. It is also in apple peel, hops and chamomile.
• Valencene
  A sesquiterpene that smells like sweet orange. It is named after Valencia oranges and is also in grapefruit and tangerine peel.
• Eucalyptol
  A monoterpene, also called 1,8-cineole, that smells cool, minty and camphor-like. It is also in eucalyptus, bay leaves, rosemary and sage.
• Guaiol
  A sesquiterpene alcohol that smells woody and piney with a hint of rose. It is named after guaiacum wood and is also in cypress pine.

Lab-sheet words

• COA
  Certificate of Analysis: the testing lab's report on one batch, covering potency, terpenes and the safety tests. Some labels link to it with a QR code; some only print the lot number.
• Batch
  One production run of a product, sampled and tested together. Every package from a batch shares one lab sheet.
• Lot
  The number that ties a package to its batch and its test results. States and brands use lot and batch loosely; the lot number on your label is the one to write down.
• Harvest date
  The day the plants were cut. Counting forward from it tells you how long the flower has spent drying, curing and waiting on a shelf.
• Package date
  The day the product was sealed into the package you are holding. It can be weeks or months after harvest.
• Potency
  The cannabinoid section of a lab sheet: how much THCa, THC, CBD and the rest the sample carried by weight. It measures what is in the sample and nothing else.
• Testing lab
  The independent, state-licensed lab that sampled the batch and ran the tests. Its name, licence number and the date of testing are on the sheet.
• Pass / fail
  Each safety test on a sheet ends in a pass or a fail against the state's limit. A batch that fails a required test cannot be sold as it is.
• Moisture
  How much water is left in the flower, reported as a percent or as water activity. Labs test it because too much invites mould.
• Residual solvents
  Traces of the solvents used in extraction, such as butane, propane or ethanol, left in a concentrate. Each has a state limit in parts per million.
• Microbial
  Tests for mould, yeast and bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella. The sheet reports each as a count or as detected or not detected.
• Heavy metals
  Tests for lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury, which the plant can take up from its soil and water. Results are in parts per million or billion against a state limit.
• Pesticides
  A screen for a state-set list of pesticide residues, each with its own limit. Most sheets print the whole list with a result beside every line.

StashLog words

• Jar
  One product you have had, logged once: the strain, the brand, the lot and its lab panel. A cart, a gram of rosin and an eighth of flower are all jars.
• Session
  One sitting: when, with whom, and which jars went round. Each jar in it gets its own hit rating.
• Hit
  Your rating of how a jar actually hit in a session, scored in parts once it has had time to land. It is a record of what you noticed, written by you.
• Ring
  The circle drawn around a jar's score: one arc per terpene on its lab sheet, each as long as that terpene's share of the total. A jar with no sheet gets an empty track.
• Crew
  The friends you share your log with. Their scores land beside yours on the same jars, so you can see where you agree.
• Reup
  Buying more. Your Reup list is the jars you want, and StashLog tells you when one turns up on a menu you follow.
• Streetside
  A jar with no dispensary label and no lab sheet. You can log and rate it like any other; its ring just has no arcs to draw.
• Lot ledger
  Every batch of the same product you have logged, lined up by lot with each lab sheet beside it; the app labels it Batch ledger. It shows how far one product name moves from batch to batch.
• Stashy
  StashLog's budtender chat. It answers from your own ratings and, when you ask about a shop, from that shop's live menu.

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