noun
General Slang
reading
· noun · ballroom
The art of the witty, pointed insult, exposing someone's flaw so sharp the room laughs.
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Definitions
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The original art form of insult in Black and Latine queer ballroom culture. To read someone is to find the real, specific flaw and say it out loud with surgical wit, making the crowd howl. It's confrontation as performance: sharp, deliberate, undeniable. As Dorian Corey lays it out in Paris Is Burning: 'Reading is the real art form of insult. Shade comes from reading. Reading came first.'
“She read him down to the studs over those shoes, and the whole ballroom was screaming.”
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reading In A Sentence
She read him down to the studs over those shoes, and the whole ballroom was screaming.
Origin & Usage
Black and Latine queer/ballroom culture; famously defined by Dorian Corey in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning. Reading is the parent art form from which shade derives.
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