anaconda mortgage

An allusion to being trapped in crushing coils of a large constrictor snake, such as anaconda, suggesting the crushing burden of such debt.

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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, page 59:

     [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, page 59:

     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, page 226:

     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.

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• “anaconda mortgage”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.