This question occurred to me as I was attempting to form an answer to this question:
Where does the word “spliff” come from?
In answering his own question, tchrist points to multiple sources arguing that the word is a portmanteau of "split" and "spiff." This theory makes a lot of sense based on the contemporary use of the word to mean "a mixture of cannabis and tobacco rolled with paper." It would then be similar to the etymology of "joint," which GDoS ascribes to the "joining" of cannabis and tobacco, although "joint" is now often used in contemporary slang to mean only rolled cannabis.
On the other hand, Jonathan Green in Green's Dictionary of Slang suggests the word derives from the verb spiflicate, and discusses the theory in more depth in an interview with Prohbtd:
"Spliff"—the first recorded use of the word goes back to 1930s Jamaica and the West Indies. I suggest that spliff could have come from "spifflicate," which means to beat up, but I’m not sure. That’s one word I never worked out fully.
Whether the split / spiff etymology holds any water seems to depend on whether the term originally referred to mixing cannabis and tobacco, or if it was simply referring to rolled cannabis only, and later came to refer to mixing cannabis and tobacco (somewhat the opposite of the drift in the word "joint").
I can't find evidence suggesting whether the original meaning referred to the mixture or not. The earliest reference in both GDoS and the OED is:
Here is the hot-bed of ganja smoking … and even the children may be seen at times taking what is better known as their ‘spliff’
- 1936 – Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica) 3 Oct. 35
No other early citations in either dictionary make it clear which was the original meaning. It is clear from the citations that marijuana is involved in a spliff, but there is no explicit mention of a mixture with tobacco.
Neither definition provided by the dictionaries clarifies the meaning either:
OED: A cannabis cigarette, spec. one rolled in a conical form; a smoke of cannabis.
GDoS: (orig. W.I., esp. Rasta) a marijuana or hashish cigarette.
Does the word "cigarette" imply that tobacco is involved? And more to the point, did "spliff" originally mean specifically a mixture of tobacco and marijuana, or just marijuana?
Best Answer
The first use of 'spliff' I could find was in the 27 April 1855 Lincolnshire Chronicle [paywall] where, in its singularity, it might well have been a mis- or deliberate re-spelling of 'spiff' (1862, OED), the shortened form of 'spiffy' ("smart, spruce", 1853, OED, in Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti; 'spiffy' with a broader sense of "decorated, spectacular" appears perhaps as early as the 1773 publication of Miscellaneous Poems, John Byrom, in an interpretation of one of Horace's Odes, and certainly as early as 1790 in a literal translation of Horace's Ode X):
The next use in the sense of "smartly dressed" was in the 27 August 1881 North Wales Chronicle [paywall]:
Although the sense of the 1855 and 1881 uses in UK newspapers is a bit different, they or similar uses may well have sponsored the adjectival use of 'spliff' as a neologistic advertising argot portmanteau-blend (the blended element is the long 'ee' from the end of 'spiffy') of 'splendid' and 'spiffy', as seen in a series of ads from the late 1800s in the Jamaican Kingston Gleaner [paywall].
For example, here is one such ad from the September 1889 Kingston Gleaner [paywall]:
(OED: "terai, n. 2. transf. A wide-brimmed felt hat with double crown and special ventilation, worn in sub-tropical regions where the heat is not so intense as to necessitate the use of the sola topee or pith sun-helmet. More fully terai hat.")
Ads for hats and other dress goods using the 'spliff' coinage continue in (and only in) the Kingston Gleaner through the 1890s.
A first use of 'spliff' with reference to ganja appears in the Kingston Daily Gleaner in 1929 (May 17, paywall), in a news story titled "Herbert Breakenridge, the 'Axe' Murderer":
A shortened variant spelling of the portmanteau 'spliff', 'splif', shows up again in the blended sense of "splendid and spiffy" in an ad in the November 25, 1929 Kingston Daily Gleaner: "...Mexican Drawn Thread Tea Cloth, real Splif".
In the March 13, 1934 Kingston Gleaner, the sense implied is again "marijuana cigarette":
Considering that the advertising argot adjectival use of 'spliff' in the sense of "splendid, spiffy" (itself possibly sponsored by the rare earlier UK use of 'spliff' in the sense of "smartly dressed, spruce") and the later early appearances of 'spliff' in the sense of "marijuana cigarette" are highly localized, that is, only found in the Kingston Gleaner, such uses are unlikely to be entirely disjoint.
Although there is no affirmative evidence to contradict the fanciful proposition that 'spliff' was first used to mean a cigarette containing a mixture of tobacco and marijuana, equally there is no affirmative evidence to suggest that the contents of a spliff were anything other than marijuana. In short, ad hoc origin stories aside, there is no reason to suppose that 'spliff', as originally used, meant anything other than "ganja cigarette" and, by extension, "ganja".