Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a drunkard.

1639

J. Taylor Crabtree Lectures 62: Thou a Poet, thou a Pot-head: your invention is never ripe but when you have beene a potting and a piping.

2. a fool; thus potheaded adj., stupid.

1825		Bell’s Life in London 11 Sept. 8/1: Myriads of blunt commoners, pot-headed squires, and the rag-tag and bobtail ragamuffins.
1839		Leeds Mercury 4 May 4/5: A number of the more pot-headed Delegates opposed this.
1854		Limerick & Clare Exmainer 8 Feb. 4/3: [A] rash endeavour to make starv’d-up pot-head paupers clever.
1855		C. Kingsley Westward Ho II 213: She was too good for a poor pot-head like me.
1858		G.W. Harris ‘Sut Lovingood’s Adventures in New York’ N.Y. Atlas XXI Aug. in Inge (1967) 13642: Durn his pot-headed soul!
1867		G.W. Harris ‘Big Music Box Story’ Chattanooga Daily Amer. Union 11 Dec. in Inge (1967) 184: I fired ole cuss, what had the misfortin to call me ‘Son, Sut,’ when he dident call me ‘Pothead’.
1869		Norfolk Chron. 23 Jan. 9/4: I bdelieve he goes by the name of [...] ‘Pot-headed Bradbury’.
1873		Cheshire Obs. 13 Dec. 8/1: A pot-headed youth with a flatulent tendency.
1890		Omaha Dly Bee (NE) 12 Apr. 4/2: The strikers were accused of being controlled by ‘labor agitators’ [...] pot-head politicians and political judges.
1893		Fort Worth Gaz. (TX) 28 May 6/4: You pot-headed, wooden-headed thing, you.
1899		Notts. Gaz. 7 Oct. 6/2: The little pot-headed liar!
1905		Salt Lake Tribune (UT) 27 Aug. 7/5: Next time I [...] get put in ther wrong seat by one of your pot-headed underlings there’s going to be trouble.
1916		Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 290: Pothead! Cranley said with contempt.
1959		I. & P. Opie Lore and Lang. of Schoolchildren (1977) 199: A person who is ‘wanting in the upper storey’ is [...] a pot-head.
1974		J. Lahr Hot to Trot 9: Irene was glad to pack them off so she could fuck herself blind with that scrawny pothead.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 50: Pothead [...] Originally a smoker of marijuana, especially a heavy smoker, a weed head, but in extended use anyone who acts as if his or her brains are addled.
1991		C. Hiaasen Native Tongue 278: Even the potheads were getting jumpy.