Word.ws English Dictionary

dope

UK[dəʊp]US[doʊp]

dope noun: any viscous liquid or paste, such as a lubricant, used in preparing a surface.

Noun (1)

dope (countable and uncountable, plural dopes)

  1. (uncountable) Any viscous liquid or paste, such as a lubricant, used in preparing a surface.
    • Use a good pipe dope on the NPT threads. When applying pipe dope do not put any on the first two threads from the end. Always put dope on the male thread—never on the female thread.1977, Robert O. Parmley, Standard Handbook of Fastening and Joining, New York: McGraw-Hill, →ISBN, page 247
  2. (uncountable) An absorbent material used to hold a liquid.
  3. (uncountable) Any varnish used to coat a part, such as an airplane wing or a hot-air balloon in order to waterproof, strengthen, etc.
  4. (slang, uncountable) Any of various recreational substances
    • Do you remember me? / How we used to be / Helpless and happy and blind? / Sunk without hope / In a haze of good dope / And cheap wine?1968, Roger Waters, “Incarceration Of A Flower Child”, performed by Marianne Faithfull, published 1999
  5. (slang) An opiate, now particularly heroin.
    • If you are at all bright, don't be a grind. Grinding may make a second-hand genius of you (for all the real things are dead), and if you become a genius you will be sure to smoke dope or swallow laudanum. They all did it.1900, “Gifford Arthur Nelson”, in The Naughty-Naughtian, page 118
    • But she went her way. Not until she accompanied a girl to an opium joint to discover whether dope had the merits claimed for it as a deadener of pain and a producer of happiness—not until then did Freddie come in person.a. 1911, David Graham Phillips, Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise
  6. (slang) Marijuana.
    • (Senator): Well good! Good! This is a fine batch of corn you have!
      (Farmer): 'Taint corn. It's dope.1981 September 26, Berkeley Breathed, Bloom County (comic)
    • Some people say that dope kills brain cells, but I can't figure out how they found that out. I mean, how do you tell if a brain cell is dead and how do you tell what killed it? I've probably wasted a lot more brain cells through booze than through dope.1983 March 28, “Smokin'”, in The Breeze, James Madison University, Readers' Forum, page 19
  7. (slang, uncountable) Information, usually from an inside source, originally in horse racing and other sports.
    • What's the latest dope on the stock market?
    • I got thru the lines and talked with the Captain and got all the Dope.^([sic])1917 October 25, Ernest Hemingway, “To Clarence Hemingway”, in Sandra Spanier, Robert W. Trogdon, editors, The letters of Ernest Hemingway, volume 1, Cambridge University Press, published 2011...
    Synonyms:
    scoop
  8. (uncountable) Ballistic data on previously fired rounds, used to calculate the required hold over a target.
  9. (countable, derogatory, slang) A stupid person.
    • The reasons why this verification is made by her and not by the defendant is because he is a dope and a fat-head and hasn't sense enough to do it himself.1902, “The Barrister's Shakespeare”, in The Green Bag, volume XIV, page 525
    • You call that steering? We almost got killed! My fault? Yeah, step over here and say that, you stripey dope! That's right, I'm talking to you!1990 February 11, Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes (comic)
  10. (US, Ohio) Dessert topping.
  11. (Appalachia) A soft drink.
    Synonyms:
    soda, pop

Verb

dope (third-person singular simple present dopes, present participle doping, simple past and past participle doped)

  1. (slang, transitive) To affect with drugs.
    • Cecil Winwood accepted the test. He claimed that he could dope the guards the night of the break. "Talk is cheap," said Long Bill Hodge. "What we want is the goods. Dope one of the guards to-night."1915, Jack London, chapter 2, in The Star Rover
    • Now, suppose another veterinarian should come along with another medicine, named “Goine;” and that a quart of it would make a horse go twice as fast, and you should dope the horse with both medicines […]1929, Horatio Sawyer Earle, The Autobiography of “By Gum” Earle, page 105
    Synonyms:
    administer
  2. (transitive) To treat with dope (lubricant, etc.).
  3. (transitive) To add a dopant such as arsenic to (a pure semiconductor such as silicon).
    • Another way to dope semiconductors is to use materials like boron, in which each atom has one fewer valence electron than does a sillicon atom.2011, Cathleen Shamieh, Gordon McComb, Electronics For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 113
  4. (intransitive) To use drugs; especially, to use prohibited performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sporting competitions.
    • The more experienced cyclists, who doped or used to dope, transmitted the culture of doping to the younger cyclists, teaching them doping methods and suggesting which substances to use.2015, Vassilis Barkoukis, Lambros Lazuras, Haralambos Tsorbatzoudis, The Psychology of Doping in Sport, Routledge, →ISBN
  5. (dated, slang, transitive) To judge or guess; to predict the result of.

Adjective

dope (comparative doper, superlative dopest)

  1. (slang) Amazing; cool.
    • That party was dope!
    • The dope conceptual beauty of the Jungle Brothers is the upful spin they put on black consciousness music, showing that being pro-black can be as much about hot fun in the summertime as gearing up for the next time.1990, SPIN, volume 5, number 10, page 74

Noun (2) capitalized: DOPE

DOPE (plural DOPEs)

  1. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of data on previous engagement.

dope meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu

dope in Hindi

डोप

dope in Urdu

ڈوپ, ڈاپ

dope in Bengali

ডোপ

dope in Telugu

డోప్
More languagesFewer languages
dope in Kannada
ಡೋಪ್
dope in Punjabi
ਡੋਪ, ਡੋਪ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ, ਡੋਪਿੰਗ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ
dope in Gujarati
ડોપ, ડોપ કરવા માટે
dope in Odia
ଡୋପ୍, ଡୋପ, ଡୋପ୍ କରିବା ପାଇଁ
dope in Nepali
डोप, डोपिङ गर्न, डोप गर्न
dope in Malay
dop

Examples of dope in a sentence

  • Here's a cure for all your troubles / Here's an end to all distress / It's the old dope peddler / With his powdered happiness1953, Tom Lehrer, “The Old Dope Peddler”, in Songs by Tom Lehrer, Pantheon, published 1981, page 18:
  • We watched as he got his works and squirted water out first, then stuck the tip of the needle into the dope and sucked it up before finding a vein and sticking it into his arm.2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 50:
  • At a suburban station, there were kids hanging around smoking dope, as ticketless entry through the exit doors is easy for them.2024 May 29, Christian Wolmar, “The good and bad sides of the Parisian Metro”, in RAIL, number 1010, page 44:
  • Got a friend with him, but he don't seem to fit the dope on the other two.'1954, Ian Fleming, “Nigger Heaven”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957:

All 40 example sentences with dope

Synonyms of dope

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of dope

Forms of dope

Noun
pluraldopes
pluralDOPEs
alternative formD.O.P.E.
alternative formD. O. P. E.
Verb
third-person singular presentdopes
present participledoping
past participledoped
pastdoped
Adjective
comparativedoper
superlativedopest

Past tense of dope: doped

Plural of dope: dopes

Origin of dope

From Dutch doop (“thick dipping sauce”), from Dutch dopen (“to dip”), from Middle Dutch dopen, from Old Dutch *dōpen, from Frankish *daupijan, from Proto-Germanic *daupijaną. “Doop” in the sense “narcotic drug” ultimately refers to viscous opium juice, the drug of choice of the ancient Greeks; “insider information” perhaps from knowing which horse had been doped in a race. Sense of "stupid person" perhaps following from the drug sense (i.e. relating to those intoxicated on opium), compare dope up. Related to English dip and German taufen. Unrelated to dopamine.

Words formed from dope

Phrases with dope

6 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with dope

14 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dope

What does dope mean?
Dope means any viscous liquid or paste, such as a lubricant, used in preparing a surface.
What is dope in Hindi?
Dope in Hindi is डोप. See Dope meaning in Hindi.
How do you use dope in a sentence?
Here's a cure for all your troubles / Here's an end to all distress / It's the old dope peddler / With his powdered happiness
What part of speech is dope?
Dope can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce dope?
Dope is pronounced [dəʊp] (UK).
What is the plural of dope?
The plural of dope is dopes.

Words near dope in the dictionary

  1. dopastatin
  2. dopastatins
  3. dopatherapy
  4. dopatta
  5. dopattas
  6. dope
  7. dope addict
  8. dope addicts
  9. dope book
  10. dope books
  11. dope deal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dope (page history and authors); DOPE (page history and authors); dope (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dope (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dope (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dope (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dope (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dope (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dope (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dope (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dope (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-dope.ogg.

Cite this entry: “dope.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dope. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.