Dictionary

brokeback en · ADJ · etymology 1

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Etymology

From break + back; first used for "hunchback" in Carson McCullers' 1943 novella The Ballad of the Sad Café.

Meanings

1. (not-comparable, rare) Hunchbacked.
   • ... his sickle-curved posture made him look as though his back were broken: a sad little brokeback dwarf crippled with age. 1948, Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Part One, 1:
   • Damn those brokeback tramps making a mess of our city.
2. (not-comparable, rare) Broken; derelict.
   • As he drove Webb looked out at the brokeback houses, the ancient cars rusting in dirt driveways. At the ruined furniture in the weeds and ruptured refrigerators and stoves lying on their sides in the front yards. Disgraceful how they lived ... 2014, James W. Hall, The Big Finish: A Thorn Novel, →ISBN:
   • The brokeback bridges in the hills sadden me: this place used to be beautiful.
   • There will be underground rivers, vast and wide, and huge cavernous killing zones with mist-wreathed stalagmite islands and waterfalls thundering into the subterranean depths — and stepping-stones and brokeback bridges to traverse under ... 2007, Charles Stross, Halting State, →ISBN, page 134:

brokeback en · ADJ · etymology 2

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Etymology

From the title of Annie Proulx's 1997 short story "Brokeback Mountain"; popularised by the 2005 film of the same name.

Meanings

1. (neologism, not-comparable, slang) Homoerotic; homosexual, gay.
   • I don't really think Frodo and Sam were gay, even if a couple of the scenes seemed a little brokeback to me.
   • You see, your words ain't worth no money, I ain't spoke back, bitch All of you niggas hang together on some Brokeback shit 2023, “Talk'n That Shit!”, in Michael, performed by Killer Mike:

Forms

Deriveds

brokeback marriage

Translations (3)

cmn 斷背 /断背 ((slang) homoerotic — see also homoerotic) · pt bicha ((slang) homoerotic — see also homoerotic) · pt gay ((slang) homoerotic — see also homoerotic)