1379: 420 Sep 20, 2018

It is sometimes difficult to find accurate etymologies of new words and in particular slang terms; part of this is due to the fact that they are likely less studied by chance, but also many people will make up their own origins. Though not a word in the traditional sense, 420 is something for which people have ascribed many false origins, including that it related to a the police code for smoking marijuana, or that it was the number of strains etc.. The reason for the former and most prevalent faux-theory is that those who originated the term spread fliers through a few cities in Southern California as a way to get in touch with people to meet up and smoke gave that as the reasoning, but it goes back much further. In the early 1970's a group of high-schoolers would smoke after school at 4:20pm, and would use that term as a code to not get in trouble around other people.