“What? What?
Dope? Whaddya mean dope? Dope? Dope? You usin’ drugs?”
Ten minutes
later the guy that asked about the new boat was peeing in a cup.
This was
several years back in another company I used to work for but it shows you how
some people don’t listen or understand.
There are a
lot of meanings to the word ‘dope’ and most of them have nothing whatsoever to
do with narcotics.
If you are
an airplane guy you know what airplane dope is. It is the stuff you paint onto
fabric to stiffen and weatherproof it. It has a pretty neat smell to it. “I put
nine coats of dope and six coats of paint on the Super Cub’s fabric,” you might
hear an airplane guy say.
If you are a
rifle shooter you dope your sights. This means you adjust them. The amount of
adjustment is the amount of dope you put on the sights.
“What kind
of dope did you put on your sights?” is a sometimes asked question of the
firing line.
An answer
might be “Four clicks up for elevation and two right clicks for windage.”
The dope,
measured in clicks would be four up, two right clicks. The measurement in
minutes would depend on the sight graduations.
Basic sights are generally one minute per click but match sights could be
half or even a quarter minute of angle each.
Then again a
dope can be someone who is not the brightest bulb on the tree. “The dope that
jacked up my truck and put the jack through the passenger’s side floor,” would
be one use.
Then again,
horse racers often put together a dope sheet consisting on the information they
need to place their bets. It may include odds, payoffs, recent races the horse
has entered and how they fared in previous races.
The word can
also be used to mean information or the lowdown on something. “What’s the dope on those new welders they
are setting up in the shop?” might be a question. The asker wants simply to
know information on the new welders that are reportedly being sent to the workplace.
He might want to know if they are any different than the welders they are
replacing or other characteristics.
But because
of the nature of people to assume the worst, I would imagine that any use of
the word ‘dope’ is going to immediately have narcotics connotations.
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