doop

The English word 'dope' — in all its remarkable variety of senses — derives from Dutch doop, meaning a thick sauce or dipping liquid. The Dutch verb dopen means 'to dip' or 'to baptize' (both involve immersion), and doop is the noun for the sauce or liquid into which something is dipped. The word entered American English in the early nineteenth century, initially in its most literal sense: a thick liquid or viscous substance. From this physical origin, the word's meanings have proliferated in ways that make 'dope' one of the most semantically diverse borrowings in American English.

The first American English use of 'dope' was for a thick liquid — initially lubricants and adhesives, then the varnish used to coat early aircraft fabric, then the opium preparations that were thick and dark in consistency. The drug sense — dope as narcotic — developed in American English from the 1880s onward, as opium smoking and opium-derived compounds became associated with the thick, viscous preparations used in their consumption. By the early twentieth century, 'dope' was the standard American slang for narcotics generally, and 'doping' (giving narcotics to racehorses to affect performance) was a recognized practice in horse racing.

From the drug sense came the 'stupid person' sense: someone who has been dulled by narcotics becomes 'dopey,' and 'dope' as a term for a stupid or slow-witted person is recorded from the early twentieth century. Simultaneously, 'dope' developed a contradictory sense: insider information, special intelligence — 'the dope' on a situation meant the secret knowledge, the hidden facts. This use may have developed from the drug-racing connection: trainers who knew whether a horse had been doped had special insider information about the race. The information sense and the stupidity sense coexist in early twentieth-century American English, pulling in opposite directions.

The twenty-first century added 'dope' as a general-purpose adjective meaning excellent, impressive, or cool — primarily in African American Vernacular English and hip-hop culture, from which it spread broadly into mainstream American youth slang. This usage is the furthest possible distance from Dutch doop (a dipping sauce): a word for thick viscous liquid became a word for supreme excellence. The journey from the Dutch kitchen to American slang is one of the most improbable semantic migrations in the English language.