[Ads-l] Monteleone's "Slang"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Sounds to me like old police or medical jargon, short for "chronic user."

JL

On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 5:47 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Monteleone's "Slang"
>
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>
> CHRONIC  (N)   A drug addict.
>
> Presumably, this dates to 1945. "Chronic" isn't the doper, but the dope -
> "very high-quality weed, generally with red hairs on it," per UD '03 -
> itself, nowadays, in my experience and in HDAS from '93..
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
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