dopey

   This can be used to someone who is acting as if under the influence of dope, or a drug which causes sleepiness. Since such a person is not thinking clearly, the word also implies stupidity. ‘Dopey’ can be a mild insult, almost an endearment between intimates, very similar in use to ‘you dope’, but since it can be interpreted as ‘you fool’ or ‘you idiot’ it can also cause offence. The following occurs in Looking for Mr Goodbar, by Judith Rossner: ‘I meant I’d go with you, dopey.’ ‘Don’t call me dopey!’ He raised his hand as though he was going to strike her. ‘If I really thought you were dopey,’ she said, ‘I’d be afraid to say it’ He lowered his hand, slightly mollified. It was a lie, of course. His dumbness was one of his endearing qualities.

   Dopey was one of Walt Disney’s seven dwarfs, in the 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. There was another dwarf, Sleepy, who was ‘dopey’ in the earlier meaning of the word, always on the verge of sleep. Dopey was marked by his general lack of intelligence.