Q. When I was young, my grandmother had a farm and did extensive gardening. She had a garden behind the house and another behind the barn. We called the garden behind the barn the truck patch or the truck garden. I wonder how this term originated. Our family lives in Indiana—I wonder if this was a local or Midwestern term.

A. Thank you for your question about truck patch and truck garden. We bet your grandmother's second garden was a vegetable garden. This particular sense of truck means "vegetables grown for market." We don't have any evidence that this use of truck originated in Indiana, but it is an Americanism.

The word truck, a verb meaning "to give in exchange" or "to barter," entered English in the 13th century from the Middle English trukken, the Anglo-French truker and troker, and the Vulgar Latin troccare. By the middle of the 16th century, truck was being used as a noun meaning "barter" or "commodities appropriate for barter or small trade." It's possible to see a connection between these senses and the "vegetables grown for market" sense of truck. (The truck describing an automotive vehicle, incidentally, comes from a different source; it probably comes from a back-formation of truckle, "a small wheel or pulley.")

The first known use of the "vegetables" sense of truck appeared in an advertisement in the Maryland Journal on December 14, 1784: "he has provided a large room, with a stove, for his customers to lodge in, and deposit their market-truck." It's impossible to know where truck was first used in speech. Whether it originated in Maryland or not, its usage spread to other parts of the country. Truck was often used in combination; truck farmer, for instance, is in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, and citations for truck patch and truck garden show that it began to appear in different regions, including Kentucky, New York, and Colorado. It now appears to be in widespread use throughout the country.

Q. How long has the word snuck been considered a correct English word? How long has an entry for this word been found in the Merriam-Webster or other credible dictionaries?

A. Snuck started appearing in the U.S. at the end of the 19th century. From the few early examples we have of its use in print, it appears that the writers who first used snuck considered it typical of the speech of rural and undereducated Americans. It was used in print in generally humorous contexts, and it was quickly categorized as a dialectal form, found in such varied places as Tennessee, Ohio, and New England.

Authors often used it as a supposed characteristic of the speech of Civil War characters, although we have no evidence that it was actually in use at that time. Eventually snuck began to be used in journalistic prose for a humorous or lightening effect, and soon thereafter it was seen with increasing frequency in contexts where no humor was intended. By now it is as common as sneaked is in American usage, and it is used more often than sneaked by younger people.

Q. I would like to find out what brokeback means (as in "Brokeback Mountain"). I am not a native English speaker, and I'm wondering if brokeback is a proper name or a newly established word in the English. If so, what is its meaning?

A. "Brokeback Mountain" is the title of a short story set in the state of Wyoming written by Annie Proulx and first published in 1997. In the short story, two young cowboys spend a summer on Brokeback Mountain herding sheep—and falling in love. The Brokeback Mountain of the story is fictitious—there is no actual mountain by that name. In the Big Horn Mountains of eastern Wyoming there is an elevated landmass known as Brokenback Peak (9,367 feet high). We do not know whether the author had this peak in mind when she wrote her story or if it is simply a coincidence. It is not unusual for a mountain with two peaks, or a sloping ridge between its opposite ends, to be called "brokenback" or something similar. In the state of Vermont there is a mountain known as Camels Hump, as its summit resembles a camel's hump in outline.

Since the release of the film version of "Brokeback Mountain" and the massive publicity that attended it, the word brokeback has taken on special meanings. In the last several months brokeback has been used as a synonym for "gay" and even as a general reference for forbidden or unfulfilled love. It will be interesting to see if any of these extended meanings of brokeback endures.

By the way, the film's mountain—which seemed to have twin peaks separated by a sloping ridge—is not Brokenback Peak. Although set in Wyoming, the film was actually shot in Alberta, Canada. The filmic Brokeback Mountain is a peak somewhere in the Canadian Rockies.