Drag & ballroom slang

Almost every word that defined 2010s and 2020s mainstream slang — slay, yas, serve, the tea, throwing shade, reading, mother — was born in Black and Latin queer ballroom culture in 1980s Harlem and the surrounding scenes. Paris Is Burning documented the lexicon; RuPaul's Drag Race scaled it; TikTok flattened it into universal English.

This list is Slangora's catalogue of drag, ballroom, and queer-coded vocabulary. Some terms here are still tightly community-specific; others have travelled so far they're now used by toddlers and CEOs.