its just the bowl shaped marijuana holding facility. its a part of most smoking accessories, just some people call hand held pipes bowls because they're basically just a bowl with a mouthpiece anyway. at least thats how i see it, i could be wrong.
yeah it's both. there is a bowl in a pipe and a bong. and pipe and bongs are both bowls. if someone says 'who's got a bowl?' they will usually get handed a pipe, but a bong would count too ya kno?
bowl is anything that you can smoke out, that has a bowl. or it refers to the bowl itself. a bong, bubbler, pipe, chillium, etc. can all be referred to as bowls.
Old King Cole was a merry old soul, And a merry old soul was he; He called for his pipe, And he called for his bowl, And he called for his fiddlers three. sometimes, its just an amount of weed. its like "fuck", a multipurpose word.