Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also dappy) crazy, eccentric, mildly insane; thus dippy about, dippy over, obsessed with, usu. a person with whom one is in love; dippy department, the psychiatric ward; dippy-house, a psychiatric hospital.

1888		Peterson’s mag. XCII 300/2: Yet no doubt they think us dippy / At Bogue-Chitto-Mississippi. / And conceive our brains as buggy In Alabama.
1899		W.J. Kountz Billy Baxter’s Letters 33: The way she trumped my ace the first time around was enough to drive a person dippy.
1904		Ade ‘The Fable of What Horace Stood For’ in True Bills 35: It is just as easy to love a Girl who has the Coin as it is to get dippy over the Honest Working-Girl.
1908		K. McGaffey Sorrows of a Show Girl Ch. ii: I can [...] get some kind ambulance to drag me up to the dippy department of some nice hospital.
1914		Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Oct. 13/2: Every town and hamlet went dippy about firemen, and it was only a hole for defunct cats that hadn’t at least two volunteer fire brigades in violent competition.
1915		S. Ford Torchy, Private Sec. 282: Course it was a dippy play of his, luggin’ me along.
1920		Ade Hand-made Fables 209: The old standby Newspaper [...] seemed to be going dippy with the rest of the Outfit.
1921		N. Putnam West Broadway 123: A few jazzy stanzas about down the Mississippi where we all go dippy underneath the ragtime moon.
1933		J. Conroy Disinherited 293: You must be dippy, sure enough!
1936		R.L. Bellem ‘Falling Star’ in Spicy Detective Sept. 🌐 She’s been kept in a private dippy-house the past few days — under narcotics. She’s drugged right now.
1937		E. Raymond Marsh 83: I’m proper dippy about you, you see.
1941		K. Tennant Battlers 83: She must be dippy.
1945		D. Bolster Roll On My Twelve 37: We’re all slightly dippy about our bally Mug.
1949		K. Amis letter 9 May in Leader (2000) 203: silly old dippy old soppy old dappy old potty old fools.
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 328: The kid had gone dippy over this snooty whore at Mrs Kipfer’s.
1967		M. Braly On the Yard (2002) 334: Chilly had pictured an ageing player driving on his dippy mother through this most obvious soft spot.
1975		L. Rosten Dear ‘Herm’ 55: Grammarians have gone dippy trying to explain when to use ‘that’ and when to use ‘which’.
1984		B. Ellem Doing Time app. C 241: I think I was starting to tip a bit, go a bit dippy, because I was talking to myself and singing to myself.
1989		T. Blacker Fixx 49: Jesus as a fly-half in the Second House XV!. You can see why we called him Dippy.
1992		R. Park Fence Around the Cuckoo 118: We got Grandpa and Grandma now, both a bit dippy.
2001		OnLine Dict. of Playground Sl. 🌐 dappy, dippy adj. stupid or incompetent.
2004		C. Hiaasen Skinny Dip 157: A dippy New Age reflexologist.
2013		K. Sampson Killing Pool 71: God alone knows why I should feel any kind of sympathy for the dippy old crook.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 107: All aluminum and glare-glinted glass [...] Some dippy Dane’s idea of swank.

2. (US campus) unexciting.

1977

Eble Campus Sl. Apr. 2: dippy – dull, trivial, boring.

3. mildly drunk.

1981

P. Wright Cockney Dialect and Sl. 91: He becomes dippy ‘slightly drunk’.

4. (Aus. prison) aloof, stand-offish.

1984

B. Ellem Doing Time 115: Those who go it alone can be considered either aloof or ‘dippy’ by the other prisoners.