In 2016, RuPaul Charles told Nightline that he didn’t think that his work would ever be truly mainstream. At the time, his competitive-reality show RuPaul's Drag Race was airing on LGBTQ-focused cable network Logo, and the world's most famous drag performer still didn't think people took his work—or his show—seriously. "I haven't been accepted in mainstream media outlets," he said, "because the only ways they can actually have a conversation with me is to make fun of me, or [to] somehow make a joke about what I'm doing."

Less than a year later, RuPaul's Drag Race had moved to VH1, and even Saturday Night Live was acknowledging its outsized role in the cultural imagination with a sketch that was one giant bit of fan service. "You have to serve complete body," as one butch auto mechanic explained to his coworkers in the scene. "Tuck, hip pads—the face has to be beat for filth. The whole picture is fishy realness."

In fact, since that Nightline interview, Drag Race, which returns tonight for its tenth official season, has won four Emmys. After making the leap to VH1, the show more than doubled its viewership and has gained a huge audience—enough to support all kinds of fans, many of them outside of the queer community. It takes pains to educate viewers about drag history. And increasingly, it's serving as a linguistic vector, introducing drag slang in pop culture at large.

If you’re new to drag culture, watching Drag Race—which debuted in 2009 and is part America’s Next Top Model, part Project Runway, and part SNL—can feel a little like stepping into unknown linguistic territory. In watching queens serve any and all manner of realness, viewers are absorbing an argot that has birthed everything from "realness" to "kiki" to "spilling the tea." And unless you've been living off the grid for the past few years, you've likely been "yas, queen!"-ed into oblivion via Broad City, 2 Dope Queens, or the umpteen million GIFs that celebrate the full-throated celebration.

Yet, for many, that slang—"work," "gagging," "eleganza," "hunty"—has been stripped of valuable context. Borrowing and stealing language, especially from communities of color, has been going on for a long time. (Look no further than the long history of hip-hop slang crossing over and ultimately finding its way into QVC watches.) And the vernacular of drag culture has been absorbed so quickly that few even know where the terms originated.

Drag Herstory Lesson

Though “yas,” the word of the moment, has undergone the most scrutiny, it has still become synonymous with hetero women. Urban Dictionary, for example, defines it as “An annoying expression used by girls expressing extreme liking.”