What does slay mean?

What slay means

Today it is an all-purpose compliment: “you slayed that outfit”, “she slayed the presentation”, “slay queen”. It praises looks, performance and confidence alike, and it is used both sincerely and ironically (“slaying the day” for doing something ordinary).

It is almost always positive. The only way to get it wrong is to use it about yourself, sincerely, in a meeting.

Where it came from

“Slay” literally means “to kill”, and has been used as slang praise on and off for over a century — in the 1920s, “you slay me” meant “you make me laugh”. Its current sense crystallised in the 1970s–80s Black, Latino and queer ballroom scene of New York City, where “slay” praised flawless style, attitude and performance: killing it.

It reached the mainstream through the 1991 documentary Paris Is Burning, then RuPaul’s Drag Race from 2009, and hit full saturation when Beyoncé’s “Formation” (2016) told everyone to slay. Because of these roots, some see careless use as appropriation — worth knowing the history before you use the word.

When it was first seen

• 1920s: “you slay me” as comic praise in American English.
• 1970s–80s: the ballroom sense: to slay a category is to win it with total style.
• 1991 and 2009: Paris Is Burning and Drag Race carry ballroom vocabulary to television audiences.
• 2016: “Formation”. From here slay is everywhere, including places that have never heard of a ball.

How it spread

Slay spread the way ballroom vocabulary usually does: from the scene to drag, from drag to television, from television to pop, and from pop to everyone. Each step widened the audience and thinned the credit.

TikTok gave it a final push in the 2020s as a caption and a comment, alongside its cousins “ate” and “it’s giving”, which come from the same rooms.

Variations

Slay queen: the address. Slayed: the verdict. Slaying the day: the ironic version for ordinary tasks. Slay as a bare reply meaning “yes, good”. It sits in a family with “ate”, “serve” and “it’s giving”, all ballroom.

Is it still in use?

Slay is a durable compliment — safe, if a little everywhere. The tells: it has been on greetings cards and in corporate emails for years, and the ironic use is now the default among younger speakers.

Our read: alive. It will outlive most of this site, because it has already outlived three previous waves of mainstream discovery.

Similar words

Often mixed up: Slay vs ate

Ateballroom praiseIt’s givingballroom rootsClock itballroom rootsGOATedpraise pairBussinpraise pairDripstyle praise

Sources

1. Wikipedia, “Slay (slang)”en.wikipedia.org
2. Dictionary.com, “slay”dictionary.com
3. Planoly, slang glossary
4. The Daily Californian, on the roots of slay

Checked 6 Sept 2026. The “still in use” verdict is our editorial read, updated by hand, from the Ask page. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will fix it.