Etymology: Dope - English Language Usage Stack Exchange 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 gambler which horses were being drugged was potentially worth a lot of money, so dope came to mean knowledge that drugs had been employed
etymology - English Language Usage Stack Exchange 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 often seem
What do you call slapping someone at the back of their head 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 of strike, typically a backhand across the face (or am I thinking of the pimp slap?)
Origin of current slang usage of the word sick to mean great? This question ought to be reopened, because the current answers are basically wrong Whether or not other usage in youth culture pre-dates it, sick became slang for pretty much the opposite of what it traditionally means in the late '90s in South London, with predominantly black kids into the 'grime' music scene, which in turn spawned the 'dubstep' music scene Dubstep has since become popular
When and from where did guns become slang for biceps? Both the Straight Dope commenter and ghoppe note the 1973 instance from Andrews Owens as the first cited occurrence of guns in the sense of "the biceps and triceps " Google Books has a copy of Black Language, but the book is available for snippet searches only, and I couldn't call up the quoted language about guns in multiple attempts
Term for when a negative word is used positively? 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 negative sense develops a positive one Also called melioration or elevation Amelioration is less common than the opposite historical process, called
etymology - Theres a pork chop in every beer, origin - English . . . 'a pork chop in every beer' A posting from September 23, 2000, at StraightDope com titled " The New and Improved Signature Thread," which collects "favorite signatures on the board," lists this as one of them: There's a pork chop in every beer An October 2, 2002, question at the message board of the same site asks whether a (12-ounce, presumably) beer has the same nutritional value as a pork
etymology - Origin of phrase put one over on? - English Language . . . 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 the United States, emerging in the early 1900s and becoming very popular by 1910 The earliest matches that I've been able to find come from the period 1903 to 1905 from various sports milieus