Matt: If you can avoid the obvious wise-guy answer, can you tell me how drugs got to be called “dope”? — No Dope, La Jolla
We sure know our dope: early America, the Dutch word doop, a thick sauce; non-Dutch pronounced it “dope”; a thick-headed fool by 1850; a goopy lubricant or varnish by 1870; molasses-like melted opium, eventually drugs in general, 1890. We immediately started fixing horse races by doping, and If you got that information from a tipster, you got “the inside dope.”
Matt: If you can avoid the obvious wise-guy answer, can you tell me how drugs got to be called “dope”? — No Dope, La Jolla
We sure know our dope: early America, the Dutch word doop, a thick sauce; non-Dutch pronounced it “dope”; a thick-headed fool by 1850; a goopy lubricant or varnish by 1870; molasses-like melted opium, eventually drugs in general, 1890. We immediately started fixing horse races by doping, and If you got that information from a tipster, you got “the inside dope.”
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