Brokeback

adj, slang

adj, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Hunchbacked. not-comparable, rare

    "Damn those brokeback tramps making a mess of our city."

  2. 2
    Homoerotic; homosexual, gay. neologism, not-comparable, slang

    "I don't really think Frodo and Sam were gay, even if a couple of the scenes seemed a little brokeback to me."

  3. 3
    Alternative spelling of brokeback in the homosexual sense. alt-of, alternative, not-comparable
  4. 4
    Broken; derelict. not-comparable, rare

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

Example

More examples

"Tom's favorite movie is Brokeback Mountain."

Etymology

Etymology 1

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

Etymology 2

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

Related phrases

brokeback marriage

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.