The American Lexicon

Some new words I have learnt in America:

ghetto : when something is cheap and nasty. I wonder if my colleague who uses this word has actually lived in a ghetto? Has the black-white divide in this country become so transparent that a word - used formerly to describe jewish enclaves but used for for predominantly african-american and hispanic enclaves of very poor people - has become a universally identified with a degraded state of existence?

mad prop : something that works, something that is good. I cannot fathom where this word came from.

getting digits : a verb describing the act of trying to obtain a telephone number from somebody.