dope

[Jonathan Lighter]

I get over 3,000 Google hits for "get the dope on" and nearly 9,000 for "dope sheet."  (I get nearly 2,000 for "smokin' dope.")

But as with "dope" (Coca-Cola), I imagine that the info-related terms are primarily used by senior citizens.   I have a friend (70) who often uses "dope it out," though only a few hundred examples turn up on Google.

Such cases support the point I made some years ago that once a slang term gains a foothold, it is not likely to have the stereotypical lifespan "measurable in weeks or months."

Most all of these "dope" expressions (except the adjective) are about 100 years old or more.

JL

sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: sagehen
Subject: dope
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jonathan Lighter writes:

What could be more passe' sounding than "pot" and "weed"? Oh, I know !
"Grass."

JL
~~~~~~~~~~
I'm wondering if even more passe than "grass" is "dope" in an entirely
different sense: that of information, the "gen," the "skinny," the "poop."
Weren't racing forms sometimes called "dope sheets"? Someone might say
"I'll send you the dope on how to sign up."
It was also a verb. We used to say "I'm going to dope this out, " & sim.
to mean try to understand instructions, or translate or work out a puzzle.
A. Murie



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