monging n. being under the influence of depressants or other drugs (especially for recreational use); idling, relaxing, or vegetating (especially due to drugs or alcohol or their after-effects); vegging out, chilling out, or chillaxing. Also, monged out, adj., feeling dulled, sluggish, or drugged. Etymological Note: From the slightly older to mong or to mong out, to take sense-dulling drugs, especially tranquilizers, opiates, or other depressants; to relax or chill out (under the influence of drugs or alcohol). (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
To feel poosly, or poosley, meaning to “feel poorly,” shows up in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York and is linked to Dutch settlement in the area. The word appears in a list of Dutchisms in the fourth edition of H. L. Mencken’s The American Language...
Valerie from Los Angeles, California, is curious about the admonition don’t buy the hype. Don’t buy the hype about the word hyperbole, though, because that’s likely not the source of the word “hype.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
My mother (born 1898, grew up in Portsmouth, UK, settled in Wiltshire, UK, after marriage) used to talk of ‘monging around’in a shop or at a sale, in the sense of ‘browsing’. I must have used the expression myself at school in Wiltshire, and since no-one ever queried it, I suspect it was current there, if not also in Portsmouth (50 miles south). Could the drugs-related sense of the word have developed from this older sense? After all, when you’re browsing, you can look pre-occupied and even drowsy or sluggish.
Everyone I know uses the word in a sexual term. Look it up in the urban dictonary. Its more interesting.
Hannah, words can have more than one meaning and Urban Dictionary is not a reliable source, especially in this case where the definitions given there are completely without substantiation.
I have always heard and believed “Monging” meant selling or pushing – as the active verb for the fish-monger, rumor-monger, or whore-monger. I have also heard of the brit-speak “monging around” which I took to be the definition given by DJ Jones. Perhaps this active and passive (as such) terms for “pushing” and “buying” or using has some relevance to it becoming a drug term?