brokeback

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

brokeback (not comparable)

1. (rare) Hunchbacked.

   Damn those brokeback tramps making a mess of our city.

2. (rare) Broken; derelict.

   The brokeback bridges in the hills sadden me: this place used to be beautiful.

   • 2007, Charles Stross, Halting State, →ISBN, page 134:

     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 ...

   • 2014, James W. Hall, The Big Finish: A Thorn Novel, →ISBN:

     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 ...

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

brokeback (not comparable)

1. (slang, neologism) 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.

   • 2023, “Talk'n That Shit!”, in Michael, performed by Killer Mike:

     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

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:brokeback.

• Brokeback