hop n.3
1. opium.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 20 Feb. 7/2: In one bunk was a smoker who had become satitated, and in the language of the class was ‘full of hop’. | |
| in Schaaf Mr Dooley’s Chicago (1977) 247: All a man wants is a nice room in th’ back iv a Chinese laundhry an’ a lung full iv hop. | |
| Bowery Life [ebook] De room wuz full uv smoke like de Nort’ river on a foggy mornin’ from de pipe de Chink wuz hittin’, an’ it smelled like taffy candy a burnin’. You know, dat’s de way de hop smells. | |
| Wretches of Povertyville 138: Druggists [...] are asked to supply ‘hop’ the opium extract used by smokers, and other morphine and opium preparations, knockout drops, cocaine, appliances and drugs used for immoral purposes. | |
| Amer. Mag. 77 June 31–5: Bimeby maybe you go jail, no got fliend bling you hop, no got money givern policeman catchem hop, you quit. | |
| Little Caesar (1932) 198: That dame’s full of hop. | |
| Gangster Girl 21: No neighbors ever smelled the aroma of the fresh poppy in its opulent odor or the aftermath of the stale hop. | |
| Mister Jelly Roll (1952) 25: I was personally sent to Chinatown many times with a sealed note and a small amount of money and would bring back several cards of hop. | |
| Imabelle 130: Hank’s on hop and Jodie on heroin. | |
| Book of Negro Folklore 360: Then here come Stack’s woman runnin, says, daddy, I love you true; / See what beer, whiskey, and smokin hop has brought you to. | |
| Rage in Harlem (1969) 132: [as 1957]. | |
| Addicts Who Survived 77: Hop was to the 1920s what cocaine was to the 1970s: a rich man’s drug, a favorite of hustlers and partygoers flush with cash and searching for thrills. | |
| ONDCP Street Terms 12: Hop/hops — Opium. |
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
| Tales of the Ex-Tanks 391: The bunch of hop-smokers got up, one by one, and crawled away. | |
| University Missourian (Columbia, MO) 18 Sept. 4/2: Chinese Reporter Exposes ‘Hop Alley’ [...] Opium orgies in St Louis Chinatown. | |
| Keys to Crookdom 119: In the old days the Chinese ‘hop’ peddlers received much stolen goods, especially gold and jewels. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 122: hop peddler A narcotic trafficker. |
3. heroin.
| Anderson Intelligencer (SC) 30 July 2/4: Opium is a popular drug and almost any form of ‘hop’ is relished. The left arm of a black prisoner [...] was fearfully lacerated by continued jabs from a hypodermic syringe. | |
| A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 11: He may last ’till Monday, Doc, if we shoot a little hop into him. | |
| Kid Scanlon 138: It braced him like a charge of hop. | |
| Bessie Cotter 131: She’s full o’ hop. | |
| Farewell, My Lovely (1949) 149: You’ve been shot full of hop [...] until you’re as crazy as two waltzing mice. | |
| Junkie (1966) 72: A variation of it is known as the Chinese cure, which is carried out with hop and Wampole’s Tonic. | |
| (con. early 1950s) L.A. Confidential 122: Were you on hop? Tyrone and Leroy must have been, they were passed out while those officers arrested you. | |
| Other Side of the Wall: Prisoner’s Dict. July 🌐 Chiva: Heroin (Spanish). Also: scam, gow, stuff, hop. |
4. attrib. use of sense 3.
| Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 208: He had a hop habit and he had it bad. |
5. any type of illicit drug.
| My View on Books in N.Y. Times Mag. 21 May 7/5: The Doc [...] butts into some kind of hop that brings out all that’s bum in him. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Experience 117: [of cocaine] Get out and hustle for your own hop. | |
| ‘Prison Lingo’ in AS II:6 282: Snow, hop, junk — Dope or narcotics. | |
| Third Degree (1931) 223: For a few bucks, the keeper or attendant would immediately find something to do in another section, while a little hop or dope was slipped to an anxious prisoner. | |
| Runyon à la Carte 32: Thaddeus is paying him more per gill for the gas than the old Vass ever gets per ounce for his hop. | |
| World’s Toughest Prison 804: hop – Opium or narcotics in general. | |
| (con. 1919) Damon Runyon (1992) 188: Four druggists who were prescribing opium, cocaine and heroin to people purportedly in need of hop as medicine. | |
| Widespread Panic 214: He was sweaty [...] on some kind of hop. |
6. morphine.
| S.F. Call 4 Dec. 12/1: [headline] Enormous Sales of ‘Hop’. ‘Wholesale House’ Disposed of Enough Morphine to Kill 500,000. | |
| You Can’t Win (2000) 136: Given a sufficient quantity of hop, no fiend is ever at a loss for a sound reason for taking a jolt of it. | |
| High Window 149: Anyway in the night, bang, Hench is bugs. So they drag him over to the hospital ward and shoot him full of hop. The jail doc. does. |
7. a regular drug user.
| ‘Prison Dict.’ in AS VIII:3 (1933) 28/1: HOP, HOPHEAD. A drug-addict. | |
| Let Tomorrow Come 151: Lis’n, you talk like one o’ those hops when they’re charged up. | |
| Young and Violent 77: I got plenty hops depending on me. |
8. in fig. use, a ‘drug’, e.g. religion.
| Big Jim Turner 151: You did your level best [...] to fill the wage slaves full of holy hop [...] holy hop, I said, to make them forget they were wage slaves. |
In compounds
under the influence of opium.
| ‘Revolt of the Damned’ in Double-Action Gang June 🌐 If that hop-crazy spick ever makes another pass at you, burn him down. |
a drug user.
| in Dark Paradise (2001) 72: Another feature of the ‘hop’ fiend is his absolute aversion to the society of everybody, save and except the fiend or Chinaman. | |
| N.Y.’s Chinatown 139: The number of ‘hop fiends’ [...] is far greater in New York. [Ibid.] 165: A hop fiend went on a weary stroll, In search of a friend who a pill could roll. | |
| Und. Sewer 110: He is addicted to the habit of opium smoking and in the underworld is known as a hop-fiend. | |
| N.Y. Times 18 Dec. n.p.: Germany would have fallen upon a world which cried for its German tooth paste and soothing syrup — a world of ‘cokeys’ and ‘hop fiends’ which would have been absolutely helpless when a German embargo shut off the supply of its pet poison. | |
| Man’s Grim Justice 29: The Chinks and the rest of the hop fiends laughed. | |
| Tropic of Capricorn (1964) 276: I don’t think he was a hop fiend. | |
| (con. 1949) Big Blowdown (1999) 183: She’s a hopfiend who spreads her legs for her next dream. |
(US drugs) an opium smoker.
| Sat. Eve. Post 1March in DN IV:ii 133: I seen the look on your face when the play came off and that little hop-fighter was poking his gat your way. |
(US drugs) a hypodermic syringe.
| in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 46: {Label on a hypodermic syringe:} Hop gun. | |
| Und. and Prison Sl. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 122: hop gun A hypodermic syringe. | |
| Narcotics Lingo and Lore. |
see separate entries.
(US) a room or apartment where patrons gather to smoke opium.
| Day By Day in New York 2 Apr. [synd. col.] Not long agao he developed a ‘yen’ — as they say in Chatown’s hophouses. |
a room or apartment where patrons gather to smoke opium or, more recently, to take heroin.
| Omaha Daily Bee (NE) 17 Apr. 8/4: Why don’t the police go ahead and close up the hop joints (opium dens)? | |
| Lantern (N.O.) 4 June 5: The police [...] raided the ‘hop joints’. | |
| Anaconda Standard (MT) 2 July 7/1: Two Chinese hop joints were raided by the police Tuesday. | |
| Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 86: She had no home, just ‘sort of hung around the hop joints’. | |
| ‘Charlie the Wolf’ in Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 27: They watched [...] night-owl restaurants, and even the hop joints, although the Wolf, unlike many of his breed, never had been a habitué of the opium lounges. | |
| Adventures of a Scholar Tramp 261: Oh, I went down to that hop-joint, an’ I rung the hop-joint bell, / And there sat Albert a-hittin’ the pipe, a-hittin the pipe to beat hell. | |
| Scarlet Pansy 66: They [...] went to a ‘hop-joint;’ such dives were fairly open then. | |
| ‘Cocaine Blues’ 🎵 Went in the hop joint smoking the pills, / In walked a sheriff from Jericho Hill. | |
| Men of the Und. 322: Hop joint, A place where drugs are used. | |
| Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 98: I’m gonna open up a hopjoint on Cedar Avenue. | |
| Foreword in Black You Can’t Win (2000) 11: Where are the hobo jungles, the hop joints, the old rod-riding yeggs, where is Salt Chunk Mary? |
see layout n. (6b)
(US Und.) a drug peddler.
| My Life in Prison 78: I know one hop merchant – ‘Willie-off-th’-Pickle-Boat’ they called him. | |
| Vocab. Criminal Sl. 46: hop merchant [...] A dispenser of opium and opiates. Usually applied to drug peddlers who have no established headquarters, but are itinerant. | |
| World’s Toughest Prison 804: HOP MERCHANT – A drug peddler who meets his customers on the street, in doorways, etc. |
(drugs) a room or apartment where patrons gather to smoke opium or to take heroin.
| Really the Blues 245: The Bunk [...] was the name we gave to little old six-foot square coal bin [...] that we cleaned out and converted into our hop-pad. |
(US drugs) a party where drugs of some sort are consumed.
| Fort Wayne Journal 31 Dec. n.p.: Then you take a shot of ‘M.’ That is morphine. And it lifts the depression. So you see for a real ‘hop’ party you have to have both of these drugs and also some marijuana cigarettes. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 122: hop party An opium party. |
1. an opium pipe.
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). | |
| Narcotics Lingo and Lore. |
2. a cannabis cigarette.
| cited in Sl. and Jargon of Drugs and Drink (1986). |
(US) foolish or exaggerated talk.
| Tales of the Ex-Tanks 199: You were giving us a hop-talk last night about walking back to ’Frisco. | |
| Criminal Sl. 12: Hop talk — Drawing the long bow; bragging. | |
| Day Book (Chicago) 19 Jan. 17/2: She wants to have a bunch of admirers [...] tellin her how beautiful she is [...] all that hop talk that sum married wimmen can eat by the yard. | |
 | Killer Mine 86: What kind of notion have you got in your head that you’re going out and shoot up somebody? That’s hop talk, guy [HDAS]. |
1. (drugs) a container for opium, and part of the opium layout n. (6b)
| Harper’s Weekly 24 Sept. 646: The other articles necessary to complete a smoker’s outfit are: a box of buffalo horn (hop toy) to hold the opium [...] a box for the ash, or yen tshi; and two trays, the one smaller than the other, on which all these articles rest. | |
| Darkness and Daylight in N.Y. 565: Near the lamp was a little box of bone, called the hop toy, that held opium. | |
| Hands Up! 215: A ‘layout’ can be purchased for any amount up to $5. It consists of the [...] ‘hen toy,’ in which the opium is kept, and a tray on which the above utensils are placed when in use [...] The opium is usually served on a ‘hop toy,’ but if this article is not at hand it is served on a card or piece of stiff paper. | |
| Wash. Post 3 July 3/1: Last year you could get a hop-toy filled fer four bits, while now Lum Sun hands out about four pfun — just covers the bottom of a shell. I’m goin’ ter quit the pipe. | |
| You Can’t Win (2000) 192: At last the little horn container, the ‘hop toy,’ is empty. | |
| ‘Lang. of the Und. Narcotic Addict’ Pt 2 in Lang. Und. (1981) 104/1: hop-toy. Var. of toy. A container for smoking opium. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). | |
| Narcotics Lingo and Lore. |
2. in fig. use, a fantasy (although not actually based on opium).
| Tales of the Ex-Tanks 284: ‘Stop fooling with that hop-toi,’ I told him. ‘This thing looks too easy.’. | |
| Sun (NY) 9 Sept. 3/2: That’s where I needed a new hoptoi again. |
In phrases
(US) behaving as if one were drugged, acting without sense.
| Enemy to Society 148: ‘Oh, you’re full of hop,’ said George rudely. | |
| (con. 1910s) A Corporal Once 116: ‘I think he’s full of hops,’ remarked Johnell. ‘These gobs have been stringin’ me all the way across.’. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). |
(US drugs) to use a narcotic drug, usu. heroin.
| Living Rough 55: I guess he’s hitting the canned heat and hop too. | |
| Narcotics Lingo and Lore. | |
| (con. 1940s–60s) Straight from the Fridge Dad. |
(US) to give an injection (of legal or illegal drugs).
| Rope Burns 6: ‘Operation is tomorrow morning.’ [...] Once they’d hopped me up the following morning I started singing songs in Spanish. |
using narcotics.
| [ | | Let Tomorrow Come 261: You try to come up out of your hop and make legible aces and spades of your existence]. |
| Queer People 244: Blynn put the poor kid on the hop. | |
| N.Y. Amsterdam News 8 Mar. 19: The real danger of Bebop is its tie-in with narcotics [...] you can’t play it unless you’re on a hop chop. | |
| USA Confidential 29: They came up with a statement that looked as if they were on the hop themselves. | |
| Narcotics Lingo and Lore. |