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
Barbara Kingsolver’s book Demon Copperhead is a retelling of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield set in today’s Appalachia. Martha shares memories of a long-ago visit to Kingsolver’s family farm in Virginia, where they...
When Marilyn from Boston, Massachusetts, used the expression Them’s the berries! with neighbors in her hometown of nearby Arlington, Massachusetts, she was surprised they were unfamiliar with it. The phrase means something like “That’s...