Slang dictionary
dope
[dohp]
What does dope mean?
As far as words go, dope is a pretty dope word because it can mean many, many things.
础听dope can be a fool, a slang term for “excellent,” or refer to drugs like marijuana. Doping is using performance-enhancing drugs in sports.
Where does dope come from?
Dope聽comes from the聽Dutch doop,聽meaning “thick sauce” and used for various types of gravy in English in the early 1800s.
By the 1850s, dope was a mild insult for a “stupid person” … even Disney鈥檚 1937 聽Snow White and the Seven Dwarves聽featured Dopey.
You know what else is thick and sticky? Opium, referred to as dope by the 1880s. This drug can be packed into a pipe as a thick paste. By the 1900s, dope was slang for other drugs, including “morphine,” “cocaine,” and “heroine” and then especially “marijuana.” A dope city is 2000s slang for a neighborhood where drugs are prevalent.
Dope spread into the hip-hop lexicon in its early days. Clean-living rapper Spoonie Gee cautioned teens on his 1979 鈥淪poonin Rap: 鈥淵ou better look alive, not like you take dope.鈥� Else you’ll be a dope, slang for someone who is drugged out.
Rappers started using the word dope聽to mean “excellent” by the 1980s, which we can find in the lyrics of hip-hop OG‘s Busy Bee and Grandmaster Flash. Some linguists call this process of changing a term with negative connotations into positive ones 鈥渋nversion.鈥� We see it in other slang like聽bad 辞谤听sick, both meaning “very good.” Associations with the euphoric feelings of being high and the “bad boy” vibes of drug-dealing, street life, and partying probably also helped shift dope‘s meaning.
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Doping, for “performance-enhancing drugs” like steroids banned in sports, came into the spotlight during scandals in baseball, cycling, and the Olympics in the 1990鈥�2000s. Particularly prominent was Lance Armstrong, the tarnished Tour de France champion who admitted to doping in 2013. This sense of dope evolves out of horse-racing slang in the early 1900s, with dope聽referring to substances given to horses to improve (or impair) their performance. Expressions like the straight dope or inside dope聽comes from bettors getting all the information on horse.
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Examples of dope
Who uses dope?
While dope聽for “excellent” came out of black slang and hip-hop culture, it was quickly appropriated by mainstream culture.
The nerdy, white step-brother in 1995鈥檚 颁濒耻别濒别蝉蝉听remarked 鈥渢hat would be pretty dope of us鈥� to help out his stepsister鈥檚 friends.
Lana Del Rey commands “Be young, be dope, be proud,” on her 2012 single “Americans.”
I did my first pull up 4 months ago and today I did 50 in a WOD. is dope.
— Megan Lien (@MeganMLien)
a dope morning
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鈥淒ope鈥� has even made its way into Kpop聽on 叠罢厂鈥檚 2015 single 鈥淒ope,鈥� in which the band boasts about being the slang term.
Despite the appropriation, it still sees plenty of use in black culture. For example, comedians Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson launched a podcast called 鈥�2 Dope Queens鈥� that discusses topics on race and gender.
Director Rick Famuyiwa titled his 2015 feature film Dope, about a geeky, black teen man who overcomes adversity, including a bullying drug-dealer.
Dope is still used as slang for “drugs,” as seen in G Unit’s 2015聽joint 鈥淢ove that Dope”: 鈥淭urn the whole brick to a Lam / Been rockin’ the dope, soon as it get off the boat.鈥�
Doping is widely used in discussions of sports. In the 2010s, a massive聽doping scandal rocked Russian sports, including an official Russian team being banned (though not individual athletes) from the 2018 Winter Olympics. The organization that tests athletes in international competitions is called the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of dope like most terms we define on 亚洲网紅露点, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of dope that will help our users expand their word mastery.