Word.ws English Dictionary

throw shade

throw shade verb: to subtly insult someone.

Verb

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

  1. To subtly insult someone.
    • 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...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
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see throw, shade.
    • 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
    • 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

throw shade meaning in Tamil

throw shade in Tamil

வெளிப்பட இகழ்வுரை

Forms of throw shade

third-person singular presentthrows shade
present participlethrowing shade
pastthrew shade
past participlethrown shade

Questions about throw shade

What does throw shade mean?
Throw shade means to subtly insult someone.
What is throw shade in Tamil?
Throw shade in Tamil is வெளிப்பட இகழ்வுரை. See Throw shade meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is throw shade?
Throw shade is a verb.
What is the past tense of throw shade?
The past tense of throw shade is threw shade.

Words near throw shade in the dictionary

  1. throw pillow
  2. throw pillows
  3. throw rug
  4. throw rugs
  5. throw salt
  6. throw shade
  7. throw shapes
  8. throw signs
  9. throw smoke
  10. throw some shapes
  11. throw someone a bone

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: throw shade (page history and authors); throw shade (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “throw shade.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/throw_shade. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.