![]() Fox Tree uses Urban Dictionary, along with other examples of “public dictionary websites” (like Wikipedia and ), to excavate the uses of like in storytelling. It allows researchers to track terms that are too recent or too niche to appear in establishment dictionaries, and to determine how people are using English online.įor example, one 2006 paper by communication expert Jean E. Whatever we might think of its vulgarity, Urban Dictionary is useful. While Urban Dictionary’s speed may be useful in a legal setting, some lexicologists believe that depending on a crowdsourced dictionary is risky. Urban Dictionary’s definition of to nut, for instance, has been brought up in a sexual harassment claim, and the meanings of jack were debated in a financial restitution case. More serious is the continued tradition of dictionary use in legal cases, where the interpretation of a single word can have grave consequences. Urban Dictionary is being used to determine the acceptability of vanity plate names in some U.S. And according to internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch’s much-touted new book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language: “ IBM experimented with adding Urban Dictionary data to its artificial intelligence system Watson, only to scrub it all out again when the computer started swearing at them.” Its pages were saved to the Internet Archive more than 12,500 times between May 25, 2002, and October 4, 2019, with a steady increase over time. Urban Dictionary carries this legacy forward, and the site is likely to persist in some form. By 1785, Francis Grose’s Classic Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue extended the slang lexicon beyond the middle-class conception, adding terms such as bum fodder (for toilet paper). The slang dictionaries of the seventeenth century were considered useful for clueing readers into the language of thieves and cheats, which itself was part of an older tradition of exoticizing the language of the poor and criminal. But it also continues a long history of recording low-brow language: dictionaries of English slang have been around in some form for centuries. With its crowdsourced definitions and high speed of coinage, Urban Dictionary is very much a product of the internet age. The phrase is often intensified as throwing some serious or major shade or other similar constructions.“IBM experimented with adding Urban Dictionary data to its artificial intelligence system Watson, only to scrub it all out again when the computer started swearing at them.” Online, users often accompany the phrase throwing shade with the New Moon Face emoji □.Ī person who throws shade is sometimes playfully referred to as a shade-thrower. While actually throwing shade can be offensive and can have a negative connotation, the phrase often carries a sense of humor and irony, the affront not to be taken too self-seriously. Subtweeting involves subtly criticizing someone without referring to them directly or tagging their username.Īs the slang has gained popular currency, shade has become used on its own as a term for the act of a “snub” or “slight.” Shade, in this way, can be a noun or a verb (e.g., to shade someone). One preferred method of throwing shade is via “subtweets” on Twitter. It is often discussed alongside side eye. The phrase is especially used in internet memes to make light of petty feuds between celebrities, politicians, and other public figures. Throwing shade enjoys broad use in colloquial speech and digital communication. ![]() The popularity of throwing shade, however, has led some critics to charge the mainstream of cultural appropriation from intersectional minority communities. The term spread further into the public lexicon thanks to its use by major personalities like Ellen DeGeneres and widely read publications such as BuzzFeed and HuffPost. Many reviewers discussed the exchange in terms of shade. While the phrase received some attention in major newspapers in the 1990–2000s, it went mainstream in part thanks to its appearance in 2010 on an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race involving a fiery exchange of disparagement. Shade also calls up, and may likely be taken from, the slang adjective shady, characterizing something or someone as “weird” and “dumb” since the 19th century, evolving to “questionable” or “objectionable” in decades since. In the film, drag queen Dorian Corey explains how shade emerged as a term for an indirect insult cast ( thrown) on a fellow queen: “Shade is, I don’t have to tell you you’re ugly because you know you’re ugly.” An early instance appears in the 1990 documentary about that drag scene, Paris is Burning. The slang phrase throwing shade is traced back to the 1980s black and Latino gay community, especially the drag scene in New York City. ![]()
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