# What does 'The Straight Dope' mean?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-straight-dope-mean/64209>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 3, 2001, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-straight-dope-mean/64209 "2001-05-03T13:25:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2001, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-straight-dope-mean/64209/1 "2001-05-03T13:25:34Z")

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I know it has probably been asked befor but try serching the archives for ‘The Staight Dope’ and you get a bunch of hits.

So why does having your dope striaght mean the information is correct?

Anyone want to place bets on how long it will take till someone (DuckDuckGoose) posts a link to the thread that answeres this question?

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**Author:** ![Mr.Cynical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ee59a6/32.png) [@Mr.Cynical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Cynical)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2001, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-straight-dope-mean/64209/2 "2001-05-03T14:32:13Z")

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I would just like to point out that you managed to spell “straight” in three different ways throughout your OP. 🙂

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**Author:** ![Gazoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ce73a5/32.png) [@Gazoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gazoo)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2001, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-straight-dope-mean/64209/3 "2001-05-03T14:48:33Z")

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[This thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=57123) addresses it and includes links to other threads which address the question.

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**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2001, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-the-straight-dope-mean/64209/4 "2001-05-03T15:45:09Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Manservant Hecubus \*  
> \*\*I would just like to point out that you managed to spell “straight” in three different ways throughout your OP. 🙂 \*\*

Thanks for pointing that out.  
I started thinking about this last night so I havn’t slept well worring about this all important subject and not completly awakened.  
I don’t really like the horse racing answer and I have wondered a bit about how a stupid person could be a dope and information itself is dope. I seem to remember a process in building modle planes where you have to apply ‘dope’ to the wings after you covered them so I thought the term might have come from that.