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Backhanded Compliment Idiom Meaning

Also used: Left-handed Compliment

A backhanded (or left-handed) compliment is an ambiguous statement that seems to be a compliment but is actually critical and could be seen as an insult; an insult disguised as praise. When someone pays you a backhanded compliment, they are actually being condescending.

Examples Of Use
“Whenever I put on a suit and tie people tell me I clean up well. I can’t help but take that as a backhanded compliment!”

“Trent, at work, told me he was impressed with how I have the boss in the palm of my hand. It’s a backhanded compliment. He’s calling me a brown-noser!”

“My cousin told me she really liked my shirt because it made me look less fat. What a backhanded compliment!”

Origin of Idiom:
Since at least the late 1800s, the term ‘backhanded’ has been used figuratively to mean “oblique in meaning; indirect, devious, equivocal, ambiguous, or sarcastic." The variant left-handed compliment comes from the use, dating from around 1600 of the word left-handed to mean “questionable” or “doubtful.” This use, in turn, derived from the left side long being associated with wrongness, evil, and even the devil.

The word sinester was the Latin word left or “on the left side” which became through Old French, our modern word sinister. Incidentally, this association of the left with wrongness or evil is the origin of another interesting English idiom that comes to us by way of ancient Roman beliefs: get up on the wrong side of the bed.

To get up on the wrong side of the bed is a very old idiomatic expression that means to start the day in a bad mood and to be grumpy all day and easily annoyed, but for no apparent reason.

The Romans believed that the proper side of the bed to get up from was the right side and they considered getting up on the left side to be very bad luck.

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English idioms are types of English sayings, expressions, or phrases. However, an idiom is different from other sayings or expressions. It is a phrase that behaves more like a word. The meaning of an idiom is not always easy to tell based on the words used. They are groups of words that mean something different than they appear to mean. These videos from Idioms.Online will help you understand the meanings of English and American idioms, learn how to use them with examples in sentences, and, when possible, will even explain the origin of these enigmatic expressions.

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