throw shade

present singular third person throws shade · participle present throwing shade · past threw shade · participle past thrown shade

1. USslangTo subtly or indirectly insult, disrespect, criticize, express disapproval or contempt for someone.

   Shade is I don't tell you you're ugly, but I don't have to tell you because you know you're ugly and that's shade.

   1990, Dorian Corey, Paris Is Burning (film)

   3 more examples

   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.

   1994, bell hooks, chapter 7, in Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations

   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.

   2014 December 10, Gina Vaynshteyn, “Emotional Stages of Hating to Loving Taylor Swift”, in Bustle

   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.

   2018 July 17, “Queen Elizabeth may have thrown shade at President Trump with her brooches”, in AOL, archived from the original on 18 Jul 2018

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see throw, shade.

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

   1994, Frances Tenenbaum, Taylor's Guide to Shade Gardening, page 1

   1 more example

   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.

   1951, The Architectural Forum, volume 94, page 187