Green’s Dictionary of Slang

hop n.3

also hops
[ety. unknown; ? pidgin Chinese term from Mandarin ho ping/Cantonese nga pin = tranquillity, bliss, peace]

1. opium.

[US]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’.
[US]F.P. Dunne 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.
[US]C. Connors 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.
[US]I.L. Nascher 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.
[US]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.
[US]W.R. Burnett Little Caesar (1932) 198: That dame’s full of hop.
[US]J. Lait Gangster Girl 21: No neighbors ever smelled the aroma of the fresh poppy in its opulent odor or the aftermath of the stale hop.
[US]A. Lomax 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.
[US]C. Himes Imabelle 130: Hank’s on hop and Jodie on heroin.
[US]Hughes & Bontemps 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.
[US]C. Himes Rage in Harlem (1969) 132: [as 1957].
[US]Courtwright & Des Jarlais 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.
[US]ONDCP Street Terms 12: Hop/hops — Opium.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

[US]C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 391: The bunch of hop-smokers got up, one by one, and crawled away.
[US]University Missourian (Columbia, MO) 18 Sept. 4/2: Chinese Reporter Exposes ‘Hop Alley’ [...] Opium orgies in St Louis Chinatown.
[US]G. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 119: In the old days the Chinese ‘hop’ peddlers received much stolen goods, especially gold and jewels.
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 122: hop peddler A narcotic trafficker.

3. heroin.

[US]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.
[US]B. Fisher A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 11: He may last ’till Monday, Doc, if we shoot a little hop into him.
[US]H.C. Witwer Kid Scanlon 138: It braced him like a charge of hop.
[US]W. Smith Bessie Cotter 131: She’s full o’ hop.
[US]R. Chandler Farewell, My Lovely (1949) 149: You’ve been shot full of hop [...] until you’re as crazy as two waltzing mice.
[US]‘William Lee’ Junkie (1966) 72: A variation of it is known as the Chinese cure, which is carried out with hop and Wampole’s Tonic.
[US](con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 122: Were you on hop? Tyrone and Leroy must have been, they were passed out while those officers arrested you.
[US]Other Side of the Wall: Prisoner’s Dict. July 🌐 Chiva: Heroin (Spanish). Also: scam, gow, stuff, hop.

4. attrib. use of sense 3.

[US]B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 208: He had a hop habit and he had it bad.

5. any type of illicit drug.

[US]‘Sing Sing No. 57,700’ 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]G.V. Hobart Experience 117: [of cocaine] Get out and hustle for your own hop.
[US]H. Yenne ‘Prison Lingo’ in AS II:6 282: Snow, hop, junk — Dope or narcotics.
[US]E.H. Lavine 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.
[US]D. Runyon 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.
[US]Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 804: hop – Opium or narcotics in general.
[US](con. 1919) J. Breslin Damon Runyon (1992) 188: Four druggists who were prescribing opium, cocaine and heroin to people purportedly in need of hop as medicine.
[US]J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 214: He was sweaty [...] on some kind of hop.

6. morphine.

[US]S.F. Call 4 Dec. 12/1: [headline] Enormous Sales of ‘Hop’. ‘Wholesale House’ Disposed of Enough Morphine to Kill 500,000.
[US]J. Black 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.
[US]R. Chandler 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.

[US]H. Simon ‘Prison Dict.’ in AS VIII:3 (1933) 28/1: HOP, HOPHEAD. A drug-addict.
[US]A.J. Barr Let Tomorrow Come 151: Lis’n, you talk like one o’ those hops when they’re charged up.
[US]‘Vin Packer’ Young and Violent 77: I got plenty hops depending on me.

8. in fig. use, a ‘drug’, e.g. religion.

[US]J. Stevens 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

hop-crazy (adj.)

under the influence of opium.

[US]E. Hoffman Price ‘Revolt of the Damned’ in Double-Action Gang June 🌐 If that hop-crazy spick ever makes another pass at you, burn him down.
hop fiend (n.)

a drug user.

[US] in D.T. Courtwright 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.
[US]L.J. Beck 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.
[US]J. Washburn Und. Sewer 110: He is addicted to the habit of opium smoking and in the underworld is known as a hop-fiend.
[US]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.
[US]J. Callahan Man’s Grim Justice 29: The Chinks and the rest of the hop fiends laughed.
[US]H. Miller Tropic of Capricorn (1964) 276: I don’t think he was a hop fiend.
[US](con. 1949) G. Pelecanos Big Blowdown (1999) 183: She’s a hopfiend who spreads her legs for her next dream.
hop fighter (n.)

(US drugs) an opium smoker.

[US]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.
hophead

see separate entries.

hop house (n.)

(US) a room or apartment where patrons gather to smoke opium.

[US]O.O. McIntyre Day By Day in New York 2 Apr. [synd. col.] Not long agao he developed a ‘yen’ — as they say in Chatown’s hophouses.
hop joint (n.) [joint n. (3a)]

a room or apartment where patrons gather to smoke opium or, more recently, to take heroin.

[US]Omaha Daily Bee (NE) 17 Apr. 8/4: Why don’t the police go ahead and close up the hop joints (opium dens)?
[US]Lantern (N.O.) 4 June 5: The police [...] raided the ‘hop joints’.
[US]Anaconda Standard (MT) 2 July 7/1: Two Chinese hop joints were raided by the police Tuesday.
[US]H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 86: She had no home, just ‘sort of hung around the hop joints’.
[US]J. Lait ‘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.
[US]G.H. Mullin 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.
[US]‘R. Scully’ Scarlet Pansy 66: They [...] went to a ‘hop-joint;’ such dives were fairly open then.
[US]Roy Hogshed ‘Cocaine Blues’ 🎵 Went in the hop joint smoking the pills, / In walked a sheriff from Jericho Hill.
[US]C. Hamilton Men of the Und. 322: Hop joint, A place where drugs are used.
[US]B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 98: I’m gonna open up a hopjoint on Cedar Avenue.
[US]W. Burroughs 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?
hop merchant (n.) [merchant n.]

(US Und.) a drug peddler.

[US]D. Lowrie My Life in Prison 78: I know one hop merchant – ‘Willie-off-th’-Pickle-Boat’ they called him.
[US]Jackson & Hellyer 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.
[US]Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 804: HOP MERCHANT – A drug peddler who meets his customers on the street, in doorways, etc.
hop pad (n.) [pad n.2 (2)]

(drugs) a room or apartment where patrons gather to smoke opium or to take heroin.

[US]Mezzrow & Wolfe 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.
hop party (n.)

(US drugs) a party where drugs of some sort are consumed.

[US]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.
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 122: hop party An opium party.
hop talk (n.) [the implication is that such talk is promoted by opium smoking]

(US) foolish or exaggerated talk.

[US]C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 199: You were giving us a hop-talk last night about walking back to ’Frisco.
[US]J.M. Sullivan Criminal Sl. 12: Hop talk — Drawing the long bow; bragging.
[US]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.
M. Spillane 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].
hop toy (n.) (also hen toy, hop toi)

1. (drugs) a container for opium, and part of the opium layout n. (6b)

[US]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.
[US]Campbell, Knox & Byrnes Darkness and Daylight in N.Y. 565: Near the lamp was a little box of bone, called the hop toy, that held opium.
[US]C.R. Wooldridge 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.
[US]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.
[US]J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 192: At last the little horn container, the ‘hop toy,’ is empty.
[US]D. Maurer ‘Lang. of the Und. Narcotic Addict’ Pt 2 in Lang. Und. (1981) 104/1: hop-toy. Var. of toy. A container for smoking opium.
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
[US]J.E. Schmidt Narcotics Lingo and Lore.

2. in fig. use, a fantasy (although not actually based on opium).

[US]C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 284: ‘Stop fooling with that hop-toi,’ I told him. ‘This thing looks too easy.’.
[US]Sun (NY) 9 Sept. 3/2: That’s where I needed a new hoptoi again.

In phrases

full of hop (also full of hops)

(US) behaving as if one were drugged, acting without sense.

[US]G. Bronson-Howard Enemy to Society 148: ‘Oh, you’re full of hop,’ said George rudely.
[US](con. 1910s) L. Nason A Corporal Once 116: ‘I think he’s full of hops,’ remarked Johnell. ‘These gobs have been stringin’ me all the way across.’.
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
hop (someone) up (v.)

(US) to give an injection (of legal or illegal drugs).

[US]F.X. Toole Rope Burns 6: ‘Operation is tomorrow morning.’ [...] Once they’d hopped me up the following morning I started singing songs in Spanish.
on the hop (also on a hop chop)

using narcotics.

[[US]A.J. Barr Let Tomorrow Come 261: You try to come up out of your hop and make legible aces and spades of your existence].
[US]Graham & Graham Queer People 244: Blynn put the poor kid on the hop.
[US]D. Burley 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.
[US]Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 29: They came up with a statement that looked as if they were on the hop themselves.
[US]J.E. Schmidt Narcotics Lingo and Lore.