The trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s friend Robel Phillipos has given everyone an impromptu lesson in pot slang.

Phillipos, friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tsarnaev, is charged with two counts of lying to investigators about his whereabouts on the night of April 18, 2013. Phillipos’s lawyer, Derege Demissie, claimed that his client’s statement was made under “intense emotional pressure’’ from the FBI. Which apparently is code for “being completely baked.’’

Demissie argued that Phillipos was highly intoxicated on the night in question, due to “fishbowling,’’ which prompted many people to respond, “Huh?’’

Fishbowling is slang for sitting in a car, smoking weed, and getting really, really high. It’s also called a hot box, clam bake, or dutch oven.


A quick search of the fount of illicit knowledge, Urban Dictionary, showed that hot box is by far the most common term with 2170 lazy thumbs up. Fishbowl got 238 votes and clam bake got 461. Dutch oven only had entries for that kind of dutch oven, but WeedGuru.com did list it under its list of synonyms.

So, since fishbowl seems to be a less common term, was Demissie’s use of it a Massachusetts colloquialism?

Staff members at High Times, the New York-based magazine that’s “the most trusted brand in the business’’, provided an expert opinion on the matter. The Editor-in-Chief, Dan Skye, weighed in on the subject, telling Boston.com he was familiar with the term hot box but not fishbowl.

Boston-native Danny Danko, High Times Senior Cultivation Editor, was aware of the term, but he didn’t consider it to be Massachusetts-specific.

“I think people say hot box in Boston, fishbowling not so much. There are so many colleges that maybe the regional terms are blurring, though,’’ he said, adding that he hasn’t been involved in “that scene’’ in awhile.

A quick survey of Massachusetts college students does suggest that geography may be a bigger factor than Danko believes, however.


When asked which terms they recognized, their responses reflected Urban Dictionary’s numbers: hot box was the most common. But, while most people responded “I’ve only heard of hot box’’ and “LOL wtf is a fishbowl?’’ the majority of Massachusetts natives replied favor of the fishbowl. One local student went so far as to delineate between the two, explaining, “I would say it is a fishbowl, or you hot box the car, as in fish bowl is a noun and hot box is a verb.’’

Whether in the form of the verb, noun, or gerund, we’re bound to see the term fishbowl again as the Phillipos trial continues. Just remember: it involves weed, no ventilation, and, according to Demissie, vulnerability to FBI interrogation techniques.