anaconda mortgage

anaconda mortgage

English

Etymology

An allusion to being in the clutches of the crushing coils of a large snake, suggesting the crushing burden of such debt.

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

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Noun

anaconda mortgage (plural anaconda mortgages)

1. (chiefly southern US, idiomatic, dated, law, finance) A loan arrangement in which all of the money borrowed from a lender, for whatever purpose, is secured by one's home, land, and other property.
   • 1889, W. Scott Morgan, History of the Wheel and Alliance and the Impending Revolution, p. 59 (Google preview):

     [I]t was not given to the prophet Isaiah even, to look down the vista of time for 2,500 years and read the Statutes of Arkansas. Under them every man who executes an anaconda mortgage is considered to plant and eat not; for them the heavens might as well be brass and the earth iron.

   • 1988, Michael Schwartz, Radical Protest and Social Structure: The Southern Farmers' Alliance and Cotton Tenancy, 1880-1890, →ISBN, p. 59 (Google preview):

     Furthermore, the merchants soon discovered the Anaconda mortgage, which forced the owner to back up his crop lien with everything he owned — land, money, and personal property.

   • 1997, Edward Countryman, Americans: A Collision of Histories, →ISBN, p. 226 (Google preview):

     In 1883 Alabama established the "Anaconda" mortgage, which "gave the landlord the right to take not only his tenant's crop . . . but also his furniture, household goods, and personal effects," again with primacy over merchant claims.

Synonyms

• dragnet mortgage

See also

• Mother Hubbard clause

References

• anaconda mortgage at OneLook Dictionary Search