O
n.— «He said some of the arrested youths claimed they didn’t know they were smoking heroin when they first started using. They claimed to have been misled by street-slang or myths spread by drug dealers. “Dealers refer to it as ‘O,’” Cloward said. “And some kids were being told it was a natural herb because it’s derived from the opium plant. By the time they started using it, it was too late.”» —“Sting traps suspected heroin buyers” by Julissa McKinnon Modesto Bee (California) Aug. 24, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
How do social media algorithms shape the way we communicate? A new book argues that the competition for clicks is changing the way we speak and write, from the so-called “YouTube accent” to the surprising evolution of the word preppy. Also: A...