Talk:dope

Usage

I think there should be some mention of the confusion between pot and heroin. Pot is called dope by politicians, heroin is called dope by drug users (and last time I checked, they are not the same thing!) Since both are slang, how should that distinction be spelled out here? --Connel MacKenzie 22:06, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

the original meaning of "dope" in drug use was heroin, and it's rooted to the "stupid" meaning, i.e. as a derisive term; its extension to pot was entirely political, as also to the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport, though it came there via the use of the term in horse and dog racing. In my view, the phrase "doping in sports" is intentionally POV by its creators, though all the wikipedia articles on the subject use it; but it's POV because the sources are POV, and also their POV is based in the deliberate confusion of the term as you've described above.Skookum1 17:12, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

It seems that dope-meaning-viscous-liquid (especially a sauce or gravy) has been around since the early 1800s.

It seems that dope-meaning-opiate has been around since at least 1888, and that the term originally arose because opium, when prepared for smoking, is a viscous liquid.

It seems that dope-meaning-simpleton arose sometime between those two meanings, having been around since at least 1851.

Source: Dave Wilton, "Dope," Wordorigins.org (5 January 2009).

There is no explanation as to why pot, or any non-opiate, would be called dope.

allixpeeke (talk) 00:43, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

   Note per wikipedia:Opium Wars that they took place c. 1840 and c. 1860 respectively; i think the trade those wars promoted would inspire adjectives, e.g. dopey, re psycho-motor retardation in India's laborers in that time-frame. (There's a great story about a doctor new to India being surprised to observe his old-hand colleague prescribing enemas to laborers based on no more physical examination than simply looking behind their earlobes. The peek was to see if there was goop there, from storing their opium there when not actually chewing it. Don't know where it's documented (medical literature?) but i've heard it told twice, decades apart).
--Jerzy•t 14:41, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

   As i note in a lower section of this talk page, i like the hypothesis of a derivation from <goop>, --> <opiate>, --> both <dopiness> and <information>. It would IMO be valuable to know more solidly if dope, a person, preceded or followed the adjective dopey (which neither wikt nor Wilton covers). I can picture the noun for a person being a back-formation from the adjective, perhaps much later than <dopey>; esp. so since <opiate> going directly --> <opiate-user> seems like a big leap. Also, we have (presumably) "grog" (rum) --> "groggy" (hung-over), "itch" --> "itchy" and perhaps (Dutch) "log" --> "logy", all of which would closely parallel dope (opiate) --> dopey.
   Could it be that English coinages occurring in British India left a sparser linguistic record than those in English-as-a-first-language countries?
--Jerzy•t 14:41, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

   Both Connel's and Skookum's credulity about the ability of "politicians" to shape the language is for me quaintly touching. Politics runs on the individual gut hopes and fears people have about their needs; politics is the art of personifying a collection of illusory hopes and fears that add up to a license to push people around.
--Jerzy•t 14:41, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

   So you (Connel) think that when drug users speak of "smoking dope", they all mean smoking heroin??? Rather, i should think that any smoking of heroin is a brief interlude before shooting H (and losing interest in smoking it), and that the vast majority of references to "smoking dope" refer to pot. (Which reminds me of pot liquor ... which apparently means "marijuana tea" much less often than i imagined. So don't let me pose excessively as a drug expert!)
   In any case, last time i checked, politicians and drug users were kinda the same thing.
--Jerzy•t 14:41, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Dope-as-heroin

this is the original drug meaning (see previous) and should be spelled out; from Aleister Crowley's time and before, "dope" meant heroin or opium; it only became applied to other drugs with the criminalization of pot...it's also not used for all narcotics - cocaine, crack, speed etc, only for opiates and pot.....Skookum1 17:12, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I always speculated that parents, afraid that their kids might be "using dope," befuddled the matter by not understanding that dope refers to opiates specifically.  But, that is mere speculation on my part.  allixpeeke (talk) 00:43, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

I found an article from 1983 in a campus newspaper where a student uses the word dope about a dozen times to refer to marijuana. I dont see any evidence that it's a clever pun or that we're supposed to be thinking about opiates the whole way through, but perhaps I missed something. Anyway I grew up thinking it was only for marijuana, so I wonder if there's some sense evolution going on. —Soap— 19:44, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I should have bookmarked what I found last month. Anyway I found another one now ... I've decided to add marijuana as a new sense, reword the heroin sense to cover other opiates, and put them both as subsenses of a single definition. —Soap— 23:31, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Found and added both quotes now. We talked above about sense evolution, but perhaps this sense has already fallen out of fashion? —Soap— 05:49, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

I was wrong about the date of the invention of heroin, but nonetheless, Green's Dictionary of Slang agrees with what our definition looks like now, and also mentions that it can mean a drug in general, which might help explain how the sports sense got started. I've never heard dope as a noun in the sports sense, only as a verb, but it could exist. Other things that can be called dope according to Green are coffee, butter, cigarettes, Coca-Cola, and whisky. —Soap— 08:18, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Dopamine

Might some of the newer senses have arisen as a shortening of dopamine? —Soap— 16:22, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Pronunciation here is American-only

The pronuncation given is purely American - a drawled diphthong based in a schwa; not sure about Britain or Australia, but in Canada it's a straight, un-diphthongized [o] (kind of like Homer Simpson's "Doh!") Skookum1 17:12, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Illicit?

Wether or not Heroine is illicit depends on the jurisdiction, as it's currently written illegality is implied. Zoef1234 19:53, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Good point.  If heroin is delegislated, the term dope won't ipso facto suddenly cease referring to heroin.  It refers to heroin regardless of heroin's status of legality.  We should probably fix that definition.  allixpeeke (talk) 00:43, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Dope meaning "information" still considered slang after nearly a century of use?

Dope's meaning as "information" is marked as 'slang', but is used to mean information since as long ago as the 1930's (for example, appearing in Amazing Stories serials). At what point does the 'slang' notation get dropped? — This unsigned comment was added by 99.120.7.243 (talk) at 02:25, 20 March 2011‎ (UTC).

I always thought it meant, not information per se, but inside information, like scoop.

In any event, it seems that this usage goes back further than 1930, to at least 1899 (Dave Wilton, "Dope," Wordorigins.org (5 January 2009)).

allixpeeke (talk) 00:43, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

   Indeed! I've heard the opiate sense (one of the above sections) before as derived from the goopiness of an opiate preparation, and perhaps in the same place, heard that "the straight dope" is the accurate information about which race horse has been given dope -- not clear to me whether

to make it dopey and slow, or

to reduce pain from an injury and thus improve the jockey's chances of eliciting a performance better than what track-frequenters have seen in recent training or races.

--Jerzy•t 10:35, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

The term "slang" refers to in-group speech. It has nothing to do with age. An expression can essentially remain limited to a certain subculture forever, and never enter the mainstream – instead, it could die out before that could happen, and in that case it would become obvious that it would never cease to be slang, regardless of how long ago it was first attested. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:54, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Firearms sense: separate etymology?

Some sources say this is an acronym for "data on personal equipment", but I'm not sure I believe it: sounds a bit too pat. If it is true, we should split the etymology. Equinox ◑ 16:05, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Etymology of dopey?

Norwegian "tåpe" and Swedish "tåpig" are incredibly close in both pronounciation and meaning to a "dope" or being "dopey". At first glance you'd assume they're derived from the same source. The words stem from the Old Norse "tæpr", and after developing into a word for a silly or dumb person it's been in use in the Nordic languages for quite a while.

I haven't found more than the one source cited on this page for the etymology of dope and dopey, and felt like this deserved a mention considering.

(Not that surprising but unrelated similarities don't happen, often, but there's also major precendent to Old Norse and Old English traded words.) 158.174.187.56 17:38, 2 August 2021 (UTC)