basuco

English

Alternative forms

• basuko
• bazuco
• bazuko

Etymology

From Colombian Spanish basuco, perhaps related to Spanish bazucar (“to shake violently”) or basura (“waste, trash”), or, alternatively, from English bazooka (“rocket launcher”), presumably because of the drug’s explosive effect. Doublet of bazooka (“crack cocaine”).

Noun

basuco (uncountable)

1. Cocaine paste, especially in the context of its manufacture or consumption in South America.
   • 1986, The Department of State Bulletin, page 90:

     Insidiously, the producers of basuco deliberately created a demand for this vicious product and priced it so that whole new segments of society—the young and the poor—could become drug consumers.

   • 2012, David F. Allen, The Cocaine Crisis, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 200:

     In Columbia there seems to be no discrimination in the use of basuco by social class. However, the more expensive cocaine hydrochloride powder is generally used by artists, industrialists, and executives, who usually snort [it].

Anagrams

• Cusabo

Spanish

Etymology

Variant of bazuco

Noun

basuco m (plural basucos)

1. cocaine paste

Further reading

• “basuco”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10