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  1. What is the etymology of "dope" meaning excellent, great ... - slang

    Jan 5, 2016 · Dope is a rather new slang word that is used to define someone or something excellent, great, impressive. OED says that it is originally in African-American usage and chiefly among rap …

  2. Etymology: Dope - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

    Sep 8, 2017 · Dope in the sense of information, particularly information that isn’t widely known or easily obtained, came directly from this practice. A whisper from the stables or some confederate telling a …

  3. etymology - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

    May 13, 2022 · 3 That's clearly clipped from the common construction as there are dope heads, hip-hop heads, meth heads and so on. Accordingly, the English wiktionary defines head (slang, countable) A …

  4. Origin of slang "fire" meaning "cool" / "great" and does it have any ...

    Jul 11, 2018 · Fire as a slang adjective appears to be the bleeding-edge version of "cool." To some extent, the word appears to be interchangeable with dope. One thing that seems odd to me is that it …

  5. idiom requests - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

    Jun 1, 2016 · Rope-a-dope is a strategy Mohammed Ali (boxer) used to outfox his opponent, George Foreman, in a match called the Rumble in The Jungle. He pretended to be beaten, falling on the …

  6. etymology - Origin of phrase "put one over on"? - English Language ...

    Mar 22, 2022 · The exact phrase "put one over on" in the sense of "get the better of"—through superior skill, superior strategy (or trickery), or the element of surprise—appears to have caught on quickly in …

  7. What is the origin of the expression "do me a solid"?

    The semantic development from ‘solid dope’ to ‘favor’ is hard to work out, and solid could easily arise as a nouning by truncation independently in different contexts: from solid N (N = dope, hash, etc.) in a …

  8. What do you call slapping someone at the back of their head

    Jan 22, 2014 · Dope slap is the most common expression I know for striking someone in the back of the head with an open palm. The b -expression, which I will not repeat, usually refers to a different kind …

  9. Term for when a negative word is used positively?

    Jan 9, 2016 · geek (see ‘Word Story’ notes) nerd wicked (the) dog's bollocks sick bad, badass dope In linguistics, amelioration is the upgrading or elevation of a word's meaning, as when a word with a …

  10. american english - Why does "to dip" mean "to leave"? - English ...

    Dalzell notes that in the hiphop slang of the same era, dip (along with dap and dope) could also mean "Good with a fashionable twist," The term dip then crossed over into white/interracial U.S. youth …