throw shade

English

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Verb

throw shade (third-person singular simple present throws shade, present participle throwing shade, simple past threw shade, past participle thrown shade)

1. (originally gay slang) To subtly insult someone.
   • 1994, bell hooks, chapter 7, in Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations:

     To begin with, I need to make it clear to those who don’t know that the throwing-shade, dissin’, “reading” style that carried Miss Camille to fame was a persona she assembled after years of ethnographically studying the mannerisms of vernacular black culture, especially black gay sub-culture, and most especially the culture of the black queen.

   • 2014 December 10, Gina Vaynshteyn, “Emotional Stages of Hating to Loving Taylor Swift”, in Bustle‎^[1]:

     Wait, 1989 is actually really, really good. It feels genuine, and only slightly entitled, and mostly awesome. You like how it throws shade, but not too much shade.

   • 2018 July 17, “Queen Elizabeth may have thrown shade at President Trump with her brooches”, in AOL‎^[2]:

     And while the meeting made headlines in other ways -- like when POTUS left the queen waiting for 10 minutes on live TV as he was running late -- no one picked up on the subtle shade Queen Elizabeth may have thrown at Trump on three separate occasions.

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see throw,‎ shade.
   • 1951, The Architectural Forum‎^[3], volume 94, page 187:

     First we pick out an overhang which will throw shade most of this time, but at the same time will not cast too much shade during those hours which are not overheated.

   • 1994, Frances Tenenbaum, Taylor's Guide to Shade Gardening‎^[4], page 1:

     A neighbor once asked me to remove a tree that threw shade onto his plot.

See also

• put in the shade

References

• “throw shade”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.