The act of hogging bogart was coined in the 1968 song Don’t Bogart That Joint (originally released as “Don’t Bogart Me” to avoid censorship) by the Fraternity of Man. The song’s inclusion in the 1969 movie Easy Rider popularized the term. Guitarist Elliot Ingber used the word in passing when the band was sharing a joint, explaining it referred to how movie star Humphrey Bogart always seemed to have a cigarette in his hand or mouth. Lawrence “Stash” Wagner then insisted they use the term in a song, and the rest is history.
Humphrey Bogart did not live to see his name verbed, having died in 1957. The prominence of the verb is a surprising legacy, considering he was the lead actor in four movies that appear in greatest of all time lists: The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), and The African Queen (1951). The American Film Institute voted Bogart the greatest male star of the entire 1900s.
The surname Bogart is an Anglicized version of Dutch last name Bogaard, an occupational surname meaning “orchard keeper”. The Dutch word for orchard is boomgaard. (The German equivalent surname is Baumgartner.) Both boom, meaning “tree”, and gaard, meaning “garden”, can be traced back to Proto-Germanic and share an origin with English beam (as in ceiling beam) and yard.