See left-handed compliment on Wiktionary
Download JSON data for left-handed compliment meaning in All languages combined (2.3kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "left-handed compliments",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "left-handed compliment (plural left-handed compliments)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1921, E. Phillips Oppenheim, chapter 16, in Nobody's Man",
"text": "\"We have sat through the whole of dinner and not once mentioned politics.\"\n\"You made us forget them,\" Tallente murmured.\n\"A left-handed compliment,\" Jane laughed.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1964 October 30, “The Morning After”, in Time, retrieved 2013-10-07",
"text": "In a somewhat left-handed compliment, UN Secretary-General U Thant described Russia's new bosses as \"competent and unpretentious.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2006 March 19, David Orr, “On Poetry: Samuel Menashe—New and Selected Poems”, in New York Times, retrieved 2013-10-07",
"text": "[C]alling someone a \"neglected master\" makes for one hell of a left-handed compliment.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A complimentary remark which is ambiguous or ineptly worded, so that it may be interpreted as having an unflattering or dismissive sense."
],
"id": "en-left-handed_compliment-en-noun-B6kIhKyP",
"links": [
[
"complimentary",
"complimentary"
],
[
"remark",
"remark"
],
[
"ambiguous",
"ambiguous"
],
[
"ineptly",
"ineptly"
],
[
"unflattering",
"unflattering"
],
[
"dismissive",
"dismissive"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) A complimentary remark which is ambiguous or ineptly worded, so that it may be interpreted as having an unflattering or dismissive sense."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "damn with faint praise"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "backhanded compliment"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"wikipedia": [
"left-handed compliment"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-left-handed compliment.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/cd/En-au-left-handed_compliment.ogg/En-au-left-handed_compliment.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/En-au-left-handed_compliment.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "left-handed compliment"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "left-handed compliments",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "left-handed compliment (plural left-handed compliments)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "damn with faint praise"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with quotations",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1921, E. Phillips Oppenheim, chapter 16, in Nobody's Man",
"text": "\"We have sat through the whole of dinner and not once mentioned politics.\"\n\"You made us forget them,\" Tallente murmured.\n\"A left-handed compliment,\" Jane laughed.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1964 October 30, “The Morning After”, in Time, retrieved 2013-10-07",
"text": "In a somewhat left-handed compliment, UN Secretary-General U Thant described Russia's new bosses as \"competent and unpretentious.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2006 March 19, David Orr, “On Poetry: Samuel Menashe—New and Selected Poems”, in New York Times, retrieved 2013-10-07",
"text": "[C]alling someone a \"neglected master\" makes for one hell of a left-handed compliment.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A complimentary remark which is ambiguous or ineptly worded, so that it may be interpreted as having an unflattering or dismissive sense."
],
"links": [
[
"complimentary",
"complimentary"
],
[
"remark",
"remark"
],
[
"ambiguous",
"ambiguous"
],
[
"ineptly",
"ineptly"
],
[
"unflattering",
"unflattering"
],
[
"dismissive",
"dismissive"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) A complimentary remark which is ambiguous or ineptly worded, so that it may be interpreted as having an unflattering or dismissive sense."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"wikipedia": [
"left-handed compliment"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-left-handed compliment.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/cd/En-au-left-handed_compliment.ogg/En-au-left-handed_compliment.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/En-au-left-handed_compliment.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "backhanded compliment"
}
],
"word": "left-handed compliment"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (4d5d0bb and edd475d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.