Word.ws English Dictionary

fish for compliments

fish for compliments verb: to self-deprecate in order to induce someone to make a compliment.

Verb

fish for compliments (third-person singular simple present fishes for compliments, present participle fishing for compliments, simple past and past participle fished for compliments)

  1. (intransitive) To self-deprecate in order to induce someone to make a compliment.
    • He’s so narcissistic! He whines that he’s ugly and unlikeable just to fish for compliments.

Forms of fish for compliments

third-person singular presentfishes for compliments
present participlefishing for compliments
past participlefished for compliments
pastfished for compliments

Questions about fish for compliments

What does fish for compliments mean?
Fish for compliments means to self-deprecate in order to induce someone to make a compliment.
What part of speech is fish for compliments?
Fish for compliments is a verb.
What is the past tense of fish for compliments?
The past tense of fish for compliments is fished for compliments.

Words near fish for compliments in the dictionary

  1. fish farms
  2. fish feed
  3. fish finger
  4. fish fingers
  5. fish food
  6. fish for compliments
  7. fish fork
  8. fish forks
  9. fish fries
  10. fish fry
  11. fish fur

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fish for compliments (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “fish for compliments.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fish_for_compliments. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.