throws 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