dope v.1
1. to adulterate.
 | Sandusky Dly Commercial Register (OH) 17 June 4/1: Dope the sheep:—that is, put on oil and coloring to make a sheep look like the required breed; that is, paint the sheep as a common horse was once painted and sold for one of a superior race. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Congressional Record 223/ 1: They will run their flutter mills and mixers, and dope the flour to suit themselves [DA]. | |
| Wash. Times (DC) 21 Apr. 10/4: The adulterated alcohol [...] is doped and creates friends [...] as the saloon-keeper can increase his business. |
2. to apply a lubricant or salve.
| Putnam’s Mag. II 363: With their snow-shoes thoroughly ‘doped,’ the crowd resort to some suitable place for the contest [DA]. | |
| ‘Dialect Words From Southern Indiana’ in DN III:ii 117: dope, v. To use a liquid for almost any purpose, as to oil a wagon; to take medicine. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Honey in the Horn I 12: There was a salad of lettuce whittled into shoestrings, wilted in hot water, and doped with vinegar and bacon grease. |
3. (US) to sweeten.
| Dubuque Dly Herald (IA) 16 Jan. 10/5: ‘Well madam, both lots is from the same factory, but there may be a little difference in the doping.’ ‘The doping! What’s that? ’ ‘Why, the sweetening! Put a little sugar in the next lot you cook and then it’ll taste just like the old’. |
4. to poison, to put drugs into food or drink.
| ‘Chimmie Fadden’s Fun’ 9 Feb. [synd. col.] ‘Some mug doped de chuck [i.e. steak] [and] de only reason de beef didn’t kill ’em was dat dey didn’t eat it’. | |
| Courier (Lincoln, NE) 27 Dec. 6/1: Charles Viall was accused of the murder of William Armstrong by sending him [...] a bottle of whisky doped with arsenic. | |
| Paducah Eve. Sun (KY) 29 Aug. 2/2: Some claim the water was ‘doped’ but no more was drunk after Land and Powers had begun vomiting. | |
| in Send No Money (1942) 95: You would like to know just where you are at before you ‘dope’ that kind of stock with a strange mixture [DA]. | |
| Sun. Times 2 Mar. 1: Alternative offered to the water drinkers of Trenton: Typhoid if the water isn’t ‘doped’ with hypochlorite of lime; an itch if it is [DA]. | |
| Inimitable Jeeves 149: We ought to cook Harold’s food ourselves to prevent doping. | |
| ‘Texas Fists’ Fight Stories May 🌐 You low-down land-sharks, [...] You doped my grog! | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | (con. 1940s) Confessions 197: At the time I was making my living be helping to dope greyhounds. |
5. (also dope up) to administer drugs (occas. drink) to a person, either to excite them or, usu., to knock them out.
| Dict. of Sl., Jargon and Cant I 322: Doping is the stupefying men with tobacco prepared in a peculiar way [...] Nine out of ten saloons in the slums employ doping as a means to increase their illicit revenue. | |
| Anaconda Standard (MT) 7 Dec. 11/3: He was made drunk, doped and put on board the south-bound train. | |
| ‘Alarming Spread of ‘Doping’’ Sporting Times 8 Dec. 1/4: Itsh not the whishky, b’lieve me, honesht fact is I’ve been ‘doped’. | |
| Dly Independent (Helena, MT) 5 Apr. 8/4: ‘I see [...] that Jack Clifford is trying to tell the people that he was doped when he fought Herrera. He was doped, all right, there’s no question about that,’ said the Kid yesterday. ‘He got the same dope that I did and the dope was that awful punch. That’s the straight dope, all right. Clifford is a baby to talk like that’. | |
| L.A. Herald 22 Nov. 51/1: Opium [...] was doped a race [...] It is a terrible curse. | |
| My Life in Prison 199: He doped the coffee of a night guard. | |
| Gunner Depew 77: ‘Gimme a deck of the stuff. Dope out the coke, Doc, dope out the old coke. Tell me, do I croak, Doc?’ . | |
| Bulldog Drummond 115: We were all of us drugged or doped somehow. | |
| (con. WWI) Old Soldiers Never Die (1964) 100: I have read [...] about troops in the War being doped with rum before going into action. | |
| (con. 1920s) Young Manhood in Studs Lonigan (1936) 279: He’d only be able to get through his work by doping himself with cigarettes and coffee. | |
| ‘Gangster in Khaki’ in Battle Stories 🌐 Thugs like you have got to dope yourselves up before you find the guts to go through with anything. | |
| Little Sister 59: That means more than one guy, unless he was doped. | |
| Inside the C.I.D. 103: He was a representative of a dog-doping syndicate [...] He proposed to dope the dogs with pills. | |
| Imabelle 39: You doped me. | |
| Scrambled Yeggs 32: Maybe they dope the victims; we’ve picked up dead hay smokers, hop-heads, drunks, a little of everything. | |
| Rage in Harlem (1969) 39: [as 1957]. | |
| Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper 100: It beats me why he should want to dope my Hankey Bannister. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Traveller’s Tool 67: I realised I’d been doped up and bunged into the Betty Ford Foundation. | |
| Birthday 165: They doped her up to the eyeballs. | |
| Life 322: Dope me up so I can sleep. | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 78: Dope any racehorses while you were at it? |
6. to use ‘recreational’ drugs.
| Century Dict. (Supplement) 389: Dope [...] intrans.To indulge habitually in the use of opium or other drugs either for pleasurable sensations produced or as anaesthetics. | |
| Dope 71: It’s bad enough in the heathens, but for an Englishwoman to dope herself is downright unChristian and beastly. [Ibid.] 147: Have you ever thought of giving up this doping? | |
| Mrs. ’Arris 169: ‘Talking of that,’ she goes on, ‘we dope a lot. [...] Why even these cigarettes as we’re smoking are full of cocaine.’. | |
| Rough Stuff 62: You were locked in your cell most of the day, and [...] all the men there were doping to forget. | |
| Death in Ecstasy 210: Heroin? Snow? Who’s doping in this crowd? | |
| Dud Avocado (1960) 209: Lila was drunk – or, if the doping part was true, she was high. | |
| Serial 43: She still had this puritanical thing about driving and doping. | |
| Corner (1998) 12: If he has to [...] he will tell a lie or two about his stealing and his doping. | |
| ‘Weight’ from Callloo 🌐 Near to normal siblings and their children—my nephews doping and gangbanging, nieces unwed, underage, dropping babies as regularly as the seasons. |
7. to stimulate or undermine the performance of a racehorse, or racing greyhound; thus doper n.
| Idaho Statesman 31 July n.p.: The mare was two lengths ahead the first thirty yards, but suddenly let up, and was badly beaten. There is no doubt but that foul play was the cause of her losing, the mare having been ‘doped’ by some one interested in the horse winning. | |
| Decatur Wkly Republican (IL) 13 Dec. 1/2: Judge Fouk sentenced Charles F. Henderson to the penitentiary for 28 years at Taylorville yesterday, for doping horses. Henderson is a veterinary surgeon [...] he perpetrated the crime by injecting sulphuric acid and croton oil into about 50 of them. Six died in great agony, and others are maimed and marked for life. | |
| Galveston Dly News (TX) 4 Jan. 5/1: Drugs of every name and description are used to ‘dope’ horses so that they may win stakes. The poor animals are stuffed with all sorts of stimulants from sherry to to strychnine. | |
| Daily News (London) 14 Nov. 8/4: ‘Doping’ meant the administration to a horse of certain medical preparations, with the object of either stimulating or retarding the animal’s progress in a race dog, through applying some form of drug, e.g. tobacco . | |
| Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 16 Jan. 4/3: Another mode the Americans had of ‘doping’ was by administration of capsules containing drugs calculated to stimulate them [...] and these were given to the horses just before the race. | |
| A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 25: There’s only one way to beat the races, Mistah Mutt, dope the horses. Now you take this and shoot a jolt of hop into Nappa. | |
| [O.V. Boob] 20 Aug. [synd. strip] I think we were doped instead of the nag!! | |
| New York Day by Day 22 Feb. [synd. col.] Dogs cannot be ‘jockeyed’ as horses sometimes are. Nor is it likely they are doped. | |
| Shearer’s Colt 167: This did not suit the plans of the dopers at all. [Ibid.] 177: They would sell him out to the police or murder him for his share of the doping venture. | |
| Cases in Court (1953) 71: He accepted without question the fact that the horse must have been doped. | |
| Four-Legged Lottery 173: The majority of winners are doped. So prevalent is doping, that the most honest trainer in Australia dare not risk a horse in an important race without ‘assistance’. | |
| Lowlife (2001) 73: I had seen horses nobbled, dogs doped. | |
| Great Aust. Gamble 124: From the beginning ‘the dogs’ have had a bad name. Greyhounds have been doped to win and lose. | |
| Great Aust. Gamble 65: [T]he stories were packed with horse dopers, nobblers, gamblers and crooked jockeys. | |
| Great Aust. Gamble 126: [P]recautions against ring-ins, nobbling and doping had to be perfected by trial and error. | |
| Grass Arena (1990) 49: I was [...] in Wandsworth prison, sharing a cell with a guy who was in for doping greyhounds. | |
| Indep. Mag. 6 Aug. 19: ‘Knocking out’ dogs by doping them is not an easy thing to do. | |
| At End of Day (2001) 150: All that shit — dopin’ the horses, fixin’ the trick bets. | |
| ‘The Dutch Book’ in Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] Until he got busted for doping my dad was a trainer [...] I practically lived at the Caulfield Racecourse. | |
| Widespread Panic 315: I doped a racehorse named Wonder Boy. |
8. to give or take medicine.
| DN II 233: ‘To dope yerself,’ to take medicine in excessive quantities. | |
| DN III 117: He’s dopin’ for the chills. | |
| diary 27 Mar. 🌐 Chas and I are both down to the inoculation. [...] I’ve got one consolation. The Doc has been doped too, and he’s a fraction worse than I am. | |
| Let Tomorrow Come 248: I wish I had something to dope me to sleep ’til breakfast. |
9. in fig. use, e.g. to undermine morale.
| Mr Standfast (1930) 702: It was Ivery or some other of the bunch that doped the brigades that broke at Caporetto. |
10. to drink to excess.
| Types from City Streets 255: It is every man’s business [...] to ‘dope’ himself, either with work, love, religion, or mere whisky, sufficiently to see things other than they are in reality. |
In phrases
1. (US) to fall asleep, to doze off; thus doped off, asleep.
| Diary and Letters 2 Aug. n.p.: Instead of sleeping we term it ‘doping off.’. | |
| (con. 1918) What Price Glory? 161: Dope off for a little while. | |
| East of Farewell 113: Don’t dope off, now. | |
| (con. 1940s) Admiral (1968) 386: We sure as hell don’t want any of our ODs doping off. |
2. (US, mainly milit.) to be inattentive, to malinger.
| Sands of Iwo Jima [film script] I doped off for a cup of coffee [W&F]. | |
| Battle Cry (1964) 108: The way you doped off on that ditch-digging detail. | |
| (con. 1950) Band of Brothers 266: The medics looked me over and decided I was dopin’ off. |
(US) to take drugs; to render oneself intoxicated.
| in Psychotic Reactions (1988) 33: Dope out with the gang, grass, speed, reds, Romilar, who cares. |
1. (US) to administer medicines or recreational drugs to oneself or a third party; also in fig. use.
| ‘By a Hair’ in Old Man Curry 82: He thinks maybe he can dope him up so’s he won’t feel the soreness. | |
| Georgie May 21: She never smiled and laughed for the same reason that the others did, doping themselves up with hoping, and bragging. | |
| ‘Gangster in Khaki’ in Battle Stories 🌐 Thugs like you have got to dope yourselves up before you find the guts to go through with anything. | |
| Dope Sick 107: ‘You dope up in front of her?’ Kelly asked. I nodded. | |
| All the Right Stuff 3: My dad [...] was actually working. At least when I saw him he wasn’t doping himself up. |
2. (US Und.) to tie mustard-oil soaked rags to one’s shoes in order to put dogs off one’s scent.
| New York Day by Day 24 Dec. [synd. col.] They finally discovered that oil of mustard on the shoes would fool them. Then, after blowing a safe, the leader would say: ‘Well, boys, we had better dope up the dogs (feet) so that the mutts cannot give us the tail.’. | |
| Man’s Grim Justice 89: We ‘doped up,’ tying a piece of oil-soaked rag to each shoe they dangled along the ground. [Ibid.] 96: We ‘doped up’ – put the oil of mustard on rags and tied them to our shoes. |
3. (US Und.) to tamper with a gambling machine to ensure the house wins.
| (con. 1920s) Hoods (1953) 182: The slot machines [...] were hidden off in a corner. Even they were doped up [...] making the jackpot impossible to hit. |
4. (US drugs) to obtain one’s supply of drugs.
| Narcotics Lingo and Lore. |