Word.ws English Dictionary

dope sheet

dope sheet noun: a summary, ordinarily in the form of a document, containing important facts and background information concerning a person, activity, or other subject matter.

Noun

dope sheet (plural dope sheets)

  1. (idiomatic) A summary, ordinarily in the form of a document, containing important facts and background information concerning a person, activity, or other subject matter.
    • "He went to Alaska and made a fortune. Then he squandered it, drinking, fighting, gambling, and frittering it away on women. . . ."
      "Hold up! Your dope sheet is way to the bad. . . . Who told you all that?"
      "Never mind. I have proof."1904, Rex Ellingwood Beach, Pardners
    • Then she started filling me in on background information that you could get from any press agent's dope sheet.1970, James Mechem, A Diary of Women, page 106
  2. (idiomatic) A publication, updated very frequently and used by people who make horse racing wagers, which summarizes information about the horses running in specific races; a publication which provides background information and/or predictions used by people wagering on any sort of competition.
    • The Bruins, seeking their third straight NCAA title, are picked on The Times dope sheet with 59 points.1973 June 7, Harely Tinkham, “Trojan Stock Soars as Bruins Come Up Hobbling for NCAA”, in Los Angeles Times, page P1
    • Also, he probably attends harness races, for he once accidentally left a dope sheet behind.2002, Walt McConville, Trabler Travel Tales, →ISBN, page 83
  3. (idiomatic) A summary of the content and technical information for a set of photographs.
    • The "field number" of the film is indexed into a reference file, along with the cameraman's "dope" sheet.1967 August 4, “Stored at Quantico: Fifty Years of Filmed History”, in Free Lance-Star, USA, retrieved 07 Aug 2011, page 5
    • Moreover, both the official cameramen and the newsreel cameramen were required to write a detailed ‘dope sheet’ describing each shot they had taken.1975, Archives: The Journal of the British Records Association, volumes 12-13, page 16
  4. (idiomatic) A set of detailed instructions which the designer of an animated film provides to the photographers and editors.
    • From a workflow point of view, the access to these tools seems to have been guided by artists with experience with exposure sheets (a dope sheet for lip synch is included) and traditional animation.2002 May 1, S. D. Katz, “Animation: Master 2002”, in digitalcontentproducer.com, retrieved 07 Aug 2011
    Synonyms:
    exposure sheet

Examples of dope sheet in a sentence

  • Bradley O'Leary, a devout Republican, and Victor Kamber, a staunch Democrat, are publishers of the Washington-based political dope sheet called the O'Leary/Kamber Report.1986 December 30, Wayne King, Warren Weaver Jr., “Washington Talk”, in New York Times, retrieved 07 Aug 2011:
  • According to his dope sheet, he's a vicious son of a bitch."1988, Terence M. Green, Barking Dogs, →ISBN, pages 69–70:
  • The dope sheet for the photographs, which may have been written some time later reads: "Accidentally shot by an Englishman while hunting in Africa."2010, Neil Parsons, Alexander McCall Smith, Clicko: The Wild Dancing Bushman, →ISBN, page 91:

Synonyms of dope sheet

Forms of dope sheet

pluraldope sheets
alternative formdopesheet
alternative formdope-sheet

Questions about dope sheet

What does dope sheet mean?
Dope sheet means a summary, ordinarily in the form of a document, containing important facts and background information concerning a person, activity, or other subject matter.
How do you use dope sheet in a sentence?
Bradley O'Leary, a devout Republican, and Victor Kamber, a staunch Democrat, are publishers of the Washington-based political dope sheet called the O'Leary/Kamber Report.
What part of speech is dope sheet?
Dope sheet is a noun.
What is the plural of dope sheet?
The plural of dope sheet is dope sheets.

Words near dope sheet in the dictionary

  1. dope men
  2. dope off
  3. dope out
  4. dope set
  5. dope sets
  6. dope sheet
  7. dope sheets
  8. dope sick
  9. dope sickness
  10. dope sicknesses
  11. dope slap

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dope sheet (page history and authors). 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.

Last updated:

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

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