chiva
n.— «Known by hundreds of nicknames—chiva, skag, horse, smack and junk, to name a few—heroin is available all over Santa Cruz County, but it’s almost never “China white”—the white powder seen on television.» —“Chiva the Destroyer” by Michael Mechanic MetroActive (Santa Cruz, California) Feb. 22, 1996. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In the 15th century, the word respair meant “to have hope again.” Although this word fell out of use, it’s among dozens collected in a new book of soothing vocabulary for troubled times. Plus, baseball slang: If a batter...
The Oldsmobile car was introduced in 1897, and shortly thereafter people began using the term oatsmobile or hay-burning oatsmobile to mean “horse.” OATS is also an acronym for Older Adult Transportation System. This is part of a complete...
The term now appears on government glossaries of street drug terms.
http://www.tcada.state.tx.us/research/slang/terms.pdf
http://www.dea.gov/pubs/abuse/chart.htm
Thanks! I usually rather get drug terms out of running text (such as news or feature articles) because the government lists are highly unreliable–they put any old term on the list. Many of the them simply cannot be substantiated.
Chiva, by the way, comes from Spanish and also means she-goat.