DL means “down low,” and most of the time it just means secret. Merriam-Webster defines the down-low as “a state or condition of secrecy” and says it’s “usually used in the phrase on the down-low.”
Dictionary.com lists a narrower sexual sense under “on the down-low,” which it gives as “(of a man) secretly or discreetly engaging in sex with other men.”
A friend who texts “keep it on the DL” about a surprise party wants silence. That’s Dictionary.com’s everyday sense, “done secretly or in a discreet manner.”
What Does DL Mean in a Text?
Green’s Dictionary of Slang treats “d.l.” as an abbreviation of down low and defines it as “secret, secretive.” In a text, that’s nearly always what it means.
Green’s earliest DL citation is a Cal Poly Pomona college slang project dated 1997 to 2000, which lists “DL (down low)” as an adjective meaning “secret.”
Merriam-Webster dates the first known use of “the down-low” to 1992. One of its example sentences, from a 2026 Rolling Stone piece by David Fear, reads, “The attraction is palpable, even if the need to keep it on the down-low is inherently understood.”
DL sits in a long line of queer code, from the lavender marriages of old Hollywood to Polari, the slang gay men used in Britain.
‘Down Low’ Meaning in Gay Slang
In its sexual sense, the term “can refer to men who secretly have sex with men,” says the NLGJA Stylebook on LGBTQ+ Terminology, which adds that they may be in relationships with women and may not identify as gay or bisexual. The usual picture is a man living publicly as straight.
NLGJA traces the term to Black men and notes it has since spread, warning that it can racialize secrecy and stigmatize Black queer life. “Men have always secretly been having sex with other men and not telling people about it,” NYU professor Phillip Brian Harper told Salon in 2004.
NLGJA advises using the term only in quotations or broad references, since people may not use it for themselves.
J.L. King’s 2004 Book and the Oprah Hour
“Oprah attention helped make a cultural phenomenon out of life ‘on the DL.'” A Publishers Weekly review put it that way. The phrase went national in the early 2000s, and Salon’s 2004 coverage pointed back to an Aug. 3, 2003, New York Times Magazine article.
Broadway Books published J.L. King’s On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of “Straight” Black Men Who Sleep With Men in 2004, and King got a full hour on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” that April. Broadway’s associate publicity director, Joanna Pinsker, told Publishers Weekly there were “requests for appearances pouring in every day.”
“King has made a lot of money and scared the hell out of a lot of black women,” HIV activist Rae Lewis-Thornton told Salon. The magazine reported a first printing of 13,000 copies and 151,000 copies shipped by August 2004, with the book by then in its 12th printing.
Keith Boykin’s ‘Beyond the Down Low’ Pushback
“I think it’s tragic to have another series of stories that portrays black men as predators,” Keith Boykin told Salon. Boykin, a former special assistant for media affairs in the Clinton White House, was among King’s sharpest critics.
He answered with his own book, Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America, from Carroll & Graf. “King’s book, Boykin says, suffers from overgeneralizations, inconsistencies and distortions,” Publishers Weekly’s review says.
The review adds that Boykin takes on “the media, which often blame closeted black men for transmitting HIV to their female partners.”
C. Riley Snorton’s 2014 book, Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low, from the University of Minnesota Press, argues that “down-low narratives depict Black men as sexually dangerous, duplicitous, promiscuous, and contaminated,” according to the book’s description.
The Down Low HIV Myth and What CDC Research Found
“A total of 24 articles and two conference abstracts were selected for review,” says a 2005 paper in the Journal of the National Medical Association that tested the claim that DL men were driving HIV among Black women. CDC researcher Gregorio Millett and Emory physician David Malebranche wrote it with two other CDC co-authors.
They concluded that “the contribution of high-risk heterosexual black men to the rising HIV caseload among black women has been largely ignored.”
“Subscribing to the down-low theory takes the focus away from the behavior that transmits HIV,” Malebranche, then an assistant professor of medicine at Emory, told the Emory Report.
“When you look at the whole issue of what down-low means, it really translates into the issue of disclosure,” he said.
A CDC-funded study published in 2009 interviewed 1,151 Black men who have sex with men in Philadelphia and New York City. “Down-low Identification was not associated with unprotected anal or vaginal sex with male or female partners,” the American Journal of Public Health abstract says.
Of those men, 361 identified as down low, and 54% of them reported no sex with a woman in the previous three months, the Public Health Management Corporation said. “The more we spend time talking about the DL, the more we continue to demonize Black male sexuality,” PHMC research associate Lee Carson said in the organization’s release.
Lead author Lisa Bond, a PHMC senior researcher, said “there is simply no more time to waste on finger-pointing and blaming.”
Black Women and HIV in the CDC’s 2024 Data
“Black/African American females accounted for more than half (52%) of diagnoses but represented only 13% of the female population,” the CDC’s 2026 surveillance update says of 2024.
Women overall were a minority of new cases. “In 2024 in the United States, 20% (7,752) of diagnoses were among females,” the same CDC report says.
PrEP “greatly reduces your chance of getting HIV from sex or injection drug use,” the CDC says, whatever label someone goes by. Gayety has covered the new twice-yearly lenacapavir shot, and the CDC’s GetTested locator lists testing sites near you.
DL Meaning FAQ
What does DL mean in a text?
Merriam-Webster defines the down-low as “a state or condition of secrecy,” and DL is short for it. Texting “keep it on the DL” means don’t spread it around.
What does on the down low mean sexually?
Dictionary.com’s slang sense is “(of a man) secretly or discreetly engaging in sex with other men.” It describes men who keep sex with other men secret, often while presenting as straight.
Is DL only used by Black men?
NLGJA’s entry says the term “can refer to men who secretly have sex with men” in general. It began among Black men and is now used more widely, NLGJA says.
Who wrote ‘On the Down Low’?
J.L. King wrote the 2004 book, published by Broadway Books. Keith Boykin’s Beyond the Down Low challenged it, and Boykin told Salon the coverage “portrays black men as predators.”
Does being on the DL raise HIV risk?
The 2009 AJPH study found that “Down-low Identification was not associated with unprotected anal or vaginal sex with male or female partners.” Testing and prevention matter more than the label.
