droga
n.— «A year ago, Angelita Medina Albarran, 47, a garment worker at St. John Knits, took out two loans from Fremont Investment & Loan to cover the entire $600,000 purchase price for 919 W. Camile St., a 1,450-square-foot bungalow. Her five grown children help pay the mortgage—$4,000 a month and scheduled to rise in May. “La droga,” Medina Albarran said. That’s Spanish for “drug”—Mexican slang for a crippling debt. The people of West Camile Street, she said, are “endrogados”—hooked on debt.» —“Santa Ana street struggles with subprime loans” by John Gittelsohn, Ronald Campbell Orange County Register (California) Aug. 12, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital is a sensuous, exhilarating meditation about the strangeness of life on a space station, with its mix of tedious tasks and jaw-dropping views. And: a musician who rode the rails in his youth shares the slang he...
Steve, a singer-songwriter from Rock Springs, Wyoming, shares some slang he picked up while months riding the rails and busking. Spanging refers to panhandling, from asking for “spare change.” The term bull refers to a type of security...