Word.ws English Dictionary

thrown shade

thrown shade is the past participle of throw shade.

Meaning of throw shade

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
  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

Questions about thrown shade

What is thrown shade the past participle of?
Thrown shade is the past participle of throw shade.

Words near thrown shade in the dictionary

  1. thrown oneself on someone's mercy
  2. thrown open
  3. thrown out
  4. thrown over
  5. thrown pearls before swine
  6. thrown shade
  7. thrown shapes
  8. thrown smoke
  9. thrown someone a bone
  10. thrown someone a curveball
  11. thrown something in someone's face

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thrown shade (page history and authors); throw shade (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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