DOPE as a college student slang term, 1

[David Bowie]

From:    Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
: Connie Eble reports:

:: I'll ask my students. But my feeling is that dope is used today as
:: much as an evaluative term ('good', 'excellent') as to refer to
:: drugs. I've been collecting dank for marijuana for the past couple
:: of years.

: Connie is undoubtedly right.  But the existence of "dope" adj. may
: create additional discord.

*But*--why in the world would such homonymy create discord? I mean, if
two words have closely related but different meanings, i can see how
they'd interfere ('cleave' and 'cleave', to take an extreme example, or
even 'dope' /soft drink/ and 'dope' /drugs/, since they're both
consumables), but language seems to do fine with hononyms that mean very
different things (as in 'lead' /give direction/ and 'lead' /metal/, or
presumably 'dope' /soft drink/ and 'dope' /excellent/).

(I made all my homonyms homographs just to make it visual, as well.)

Incidentally--when i mentioned Nick at Nite earlier, i was thinking
mainly of shows like Dragnet--i know it's in syndication, but i'm not
sure if Nickelodeon shows it. Seems the kind of thing that would show up
there, though, especially in the second half of the time block.

--
David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
     Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
     house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
     chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.