Word.ws English Dictionary

left-handed compliments

left-handed compliments is the plural of left-handed compliment.

Meaning of left-handed compliment

Noun

left-handed compliment (plural left-handed compliments)

  1. (idiomatic) A complimentary remark which is ambiguous or ineptly worded, so that it may be interpreted as having an unflattering or dismissive sense.
    • "We have sat through the whole of dinner and not once mentioned politics."
      "You made us forget them," Tallente murmured.
      "A left-handed compliment," Jane laughed.1921, E. Phillips Oppenheim, chapter 16, in Nobody's Man

Questions about left-handed compliments

What is left-handed compliments the plural of?
Left-handed compliments is the plural of left-handed compliment.

Words near left-handed compliments in the dictionary

  1. left-handed anti-neutrino
  2. left-handed anti-neutrinos
  3. left-handed cigarette
  4. left-handed cigarettes
  5. left-handed compliment
  6. left-handed compliments
  7. left-handed monkey wrench
  8. left-handed monkey wrenches
  9. left-handed path
  10. left-handed smoke shifter
  11. left-handed smoke shifters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: left-handed compliments (page history and authors); left-handed compliment (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: “left-handed compliments.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/left-handed_compliments. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.