Entry · catalog no. 9214
down low
/ /ˈdaʊn ˈloʊ/ /DOWN LOW
noun / adjective phrase · United States, Black communities (late 20th century) · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
Secret or discreet. 'On the down low' (or 'DL') means keeping something quiet, including affairs and other hidden dealings.
“Keep it on the down low; I don't want the whole church to know.”
2.
A Black man who has sex with men but does not identify as gay or bisexual and hides this from partners and community; also the secrecy itself.
“The magazine ran a panic story about men on the down low.”
Origin & Attribution
The term originated in the Black American community for any slick or secret behavior, including infidelity. Cassell's Dictionary of Slang dates it to the 1990s. The same-sex sense reached the mainstream in 2001, when the Los Angeles Times (7 February 2001) ran what is considered the first mainstream account of a down-low subculture, and in 2004, when J.L. King's book On the Down Low was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show (16 April 2004). Writers including Jason King (Village Voice, June 2003) and Keith Boykin (Beyond the Down Low) argued that media coverage linking Black men on the down low to HIV among women was driven by racism, sexism and homophobia, and a content analysis of more than 170 articles (2001-2006) found Black bisexual men were pathologised in ways white men were not.
1990
Term is in Black slang use for secrecy
2001
Los Angeles Times runs first mainstream account of a down-low subculture
2004
J.L. King on The Oprah Winfrey Show
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
United States, Black communities (late 20th century) · 1990s
Spoken by
Black Americans; later media and public health writers
$DOWNLOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Fading11 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
35/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1990
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
Mainstream crossover
2001
search interest spikes
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Wikipedia, 'Down-low (sexual slang)' (Cassell's, LA Times 2001, Oprah 2004, Village Voice 2003); secondary
web
■
J.L. King, On the Down Low (2004)
book
■
+ Cite a sourceKeith Boykin, Beyond the Down Low
book
See also