khat

Etymology

From Arabic قَات (qāt).

noun

1. A shrub, Catha edulis, whose leaves are used as a mild stimulant when chewed or brewed as tea; also a drug produced from this plant.
   They are chewing on khat, a small serrated, bitter leaf with remarkable stimulative properties. […] One of the great things about khat[…] is that after a good chew you need to do something—walking, running, chopping wood, vigorously reciting a poem, throwing a grenade, anything that requires boldness and physical initiative. 1967-07-09, Lawrence Fellows, “East Africa Turns On With Khat”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
   Of course he was an amateur of quat – hashish – which delighted the cops. 1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, Faber & Faber, published 1992, page 31
   ‘And skinny Arab beggars who chew qat all day long to kill their appetites and get high on the weed.’ 2004, Khushwant Singh, Burial at Sea, Penguin, published 2014, page 25
   Habitually munching on narcotic leaves of khat, they are easy enough to spot, their gleaming Toyota four-wheel-drives slicing paths around beaten-up wheelbarrows and pushcarts. 2011-05-24, Jay Bahadur, “Somali pirate: 'We're not murderers… we just attack ships'”, in the Guardian