I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a little (maybe a lot) out of touch with all the current trends. I’ve noticed lately that some people talk and use words that I’m familiar with, but I don’t understand what they’re saying.
A good example is the word “shade.” I’ve used that word most all my life. When I was a kid, on hot summer days, we used to sit under the shade of a tree to cool off. I also remember calling my sunglasses “shades” when I wanted to talk cool. My dictionary says (1) shade is the blocking of sunlight by any object, and also the shadow created by that object. (2) a color, especially with regard to how light or dark it is or as distinguished from others nearly like it. (3) comparative darkness and coolness caused by shelter from direct sunlight. So far so good.
But a few minutes ago, I read the following “headline” to a story on the Internet: “Was Taylor Swift Throwing Shade in ‘Shake It off’ Performance?”
To someone that grew up sitting under the shade of a tree, this doesn’t make any sense at all. But the truth is I’ve heard “throwing shade” used a lot lately…so I figured I better do some extensive research to see what these people are talking about.
Apparently, in today’s language, to throw shade means to insult someone or to trash talk to someone. I believe throwing shade falls into the idiom category — an idiom is a word, group of words, or a phrase that has a figurative meaning that is not easily deduced from its literal meaning. I think “throwing shade” meets that criteria.
Turns out that the phrase came into use in the African-American and latino drag-performing communities in the 1980s and was introduced into the mainstream in the documentary Paris is Burning in 1990.
Now if you’re going to insult someone by “throwing shade” there are rules…the insult has to be subtle and not necessarily appear to be insulting at first. Here’s an example: someone is ugly — but say they already know they’re ugly, you say something that’s not directly an insult that gets the ugly person to think about how ugly they really are. Sounds complicated to me, but rules is rules….
So the insult isn’t a direct criticism or maybe not even a negative comment — of course it’s not a positive comment either. It’s like a dishonest, or shady comment. As an aside, “no shade” means “no offense meant for what I said.”
It seems that “throw shade” has been around for more than twenty years and I’m just now noticing it being used. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to catch up — I’m still learning to “text.”
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