Sickening

Sickening is a superlative from Black and Latinx ballroom and drag culture, where it means so gorgeous, sharp, or fierce that the brilliance is almost too much to handle. Calling a look, a runway, or a performance sickening is one of the highest compliments you can give, along the same lines as fierce or gagging. The word inverts a negative into praise, a common move in ballroom slang. Like tea, shade, and slay, it spread from the ballroom scene into wider queer vernacular and then into mainstream pop culture, helped along by RuPaul's Drag Race, where it is part of the everyday vocabulary of the runway.