the.com/dope
Slang that moonlights as a drug and a compliment, context does the heavy lifting.
means A word that can mean a stupid/sluggish person or thing, an illegal narcotic, the inside scoop, or — flipped entirely — something excellent, depending entirely on tone and context.
from From Dutch 'doop,' a sauce or dipping liquid, tied to 'dopen,' to dip. English borrowed it in the 1800s for a thick syrupy substance — first literal gunk like varnish or lubricant, then slang for opium and other drugs people 'dipped' into. From drugs it slid toward 'dopey' (sluggish, stupefied, as if drugged) and 'the dope' (inside info, like something smeared on for an edge in horse racing). The leap to '100% dope = excellent' is 20th-century slang inversion, the same flip that turned 'bad' and 'sick' into praise.
- origin
- from Dutch doop, a sauce or gravy
- 1800s meaning
- thick opium syrup, literally
- slang shift
- drugs implied dullness, then flipped to excellence
- irony
- calling someone dope once meant calling them dumb