A drag or puff on a cigarette or marijuana joint; a quick inhalation of smoke.
Origin uncertain, possibly from Spanish 'toque' (touch) or Portuguese, entering English slang in the mid-20th century. Some suggest it may derive from the verb 'take' with altered pronunciation. It became popular in counterculture and jazz communities.
The word 'toke' is a window into 1950s and 60s jazz culture—it appears in Be-Bop slang before it became a mainstream word. Musicians created their own vocabulary partly as in-group code, and 'toke' stuck around as one of the few terms that survived into modern English.
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