Shade

Shade is a subtle, indirect insult delivered with a veneer of innocence. The point is deniability. You cut someone down without ever saying anything you can be pinned to. The term comes from Black and Latino drag and ballroom culture in New York, and it was explained for a wide audience in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, where performer Dorian Corey lays out the difference between reading and shade. A read is a direct, pointed insult. Shade is the sly cousin: you do not have to call someone ugly because you can make them feel it without saying the word. The phrase has since spread far beyond queer spaces into everyday slang, often as "throwing shade."