cig

The word 'cig' is a modern English slang abbreviation, a straightforward clipping of the longer word 'cigarette'. Its journey begins with 'cigarette', a French diminutive meaning 'little cigar'. The root 'cigar' entered European languages from the Spanish 'cigarro', whose origin is uncertain but often suggested to come from the Mayan word 'sik'ar' (to smoke tobacco leaves). Therefore, 'cig' represents the final stage in a process of linguistic economy, distilling a word of complex historical and cultural lineage down to its most essential, monosyllabic form for casual speech.

This word is a simplex clipping. It is a shortened form of the word 'cigarette', which itself derives from the French 'cigarette', a diminutive of 'cigare' (cigar), from Spanish 'cigarro'.