dopey
Americanadjective
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stupid; inane.
It was rather dopey of him to lock himself out.
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sluggish or befuddled from or as from the use of narcotics or alcohol.
adjective
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slang silly
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informal half-asleep or in a state of semiconsciousness, as when under the influence of a drug
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of dopey
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
I assume Vrabel thinks it’s a dopey move.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 28, 2026
But Stokes' men have been careless, loose and downright dopey.
From BBC ● Dec. 25, 2025
Emerson sometimes feels as if the Kings are testing him: “Can we make it so dopey that Emerson won’t do it? But I’ve defeated them.”
From New York Times ● May 20, 2024
Here, with his dopey expressions fused to a satyr’s body, he makes you nervous the way Malcolm McDowell did after he was reformed in “A Clockwork Orange.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 17, 2023
Some dopey movie actor was standing near us, having a cigarette.
From "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger
What it does have time for often feels less than vital: earnest exposition, wall-rattling fisticuffs and comic asides that prove dopier, but also sweeter, than those glib Whedon one-liners.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 15, 2021
Why did John Krasinski’s character get progressively dopier until he became the kind of clueless dad most often seen in commercials asking his wife how to use a mop?
From Slate ● Jan. 2, 2019
The local small fry rarely earn a second glance — Bagel the Chiweenie with her “redrum” bark, for example. But larger, dopier dogs set her off.
From Salon ● Sep. 6, 2016
With the ghost looming, the petty concerns of the local young-mom cadre look dopier than ever to Bridget, who gradually loses patience with the conventions that rule her narrow world.
From New York Times ● Oct. 24, 2014
Alice was also louder and more argumentative, and Norton was dopier, unlikely as that may sound.
From Time Magazine Archive
Charlotte Towner said of her American bully XL Coco: "She's just the sloppiest, dopiest dog I've ever owned. She's great with other people, her only downside is she gets excited when she sees people."
From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2023
“The Secret: Dare to Dream,” a romantic drama about the power of magical thinking, may not be the worst movie of 2020, but it has to be the dopiest.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2020
They’re the dopiest duo ever to have traveled to the past and the future, heaven and hell.
From New York Times ● Mar. 20, 2019
In some respects, the parade is a thermometer calibrated to precisely read the temperature of popular culture at its dopiest.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 21, 2018
Say, that was the dopiest bunch of kids I ever saw.
From Shorty McCabe by Wilson, F. Vaux (Francis Vaux)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
