Hi everyone, I am Gülden from Türkiye.
I hope you enjoy Everybody ESL.
Welcome to episode 467 of Everybody ESL, the podcast for everybody who wants to improve their English, practice their English or just learn more English.
My name is Ben and I have a mini episode for you today where I am going to teach you about one English topic.
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Okay, let's get on with this mini-episode.
In this episode, I am going to teach you an interesting phrase.
The phrase is backhanded compliment.
Backhanded compliment.
That's spelled B-A-C-K-H-A-N-D-E-D-C-O-M-P-L-I-M-E-N-T.
Backhanded complement.
You have probably seen the word compliment before.
A compliment is a nice observation that you make.
It is a nice thing that you say about somebody.
If you tell somebody Oh, you are very kind.
That is a compliment.
Or if you say, you did a very good job on your presentation.
That is a compliment.
It is an example of praise or saying something nice about somebody.
And in this expression, backhanded means indirect. or insincere.
So if we put these two words together, backhanded and compliment, what do we get?
What is a backhanded compliment?
A backhanded compliment is a remark or an observation.
That might look very positive, it might look like a regular compliment, but it is actually more like an insult.
It's kind of like an insult inside a compliment.
It looks like a compliment, but it really isn't.
It's actually an insult.
Let me give you two examples of backhanded compliments, and then I think you will understand how we use this term.
Imagine that one person says to another, You know, you're actually a lot smarter than people say.
You're actually a lot smarter than people say.
That might look or sound like a compliment.
I mean, the person is saying you are smart or you are smarter or something like that.
But it's actually kind of an insult, because the person is really saying other people say you're not very smart.
That's sort of the insult that is covered by a compliment.
It might look like a compliment, but it's actually an insult.
You know, you're a lot smarter than other people say you are.
That's not a very nice thing to say.
Here's another example of a backhanded compliment.
Imagine that somebody has gone to someone else's house and the person served them a cake.
The person made a cake and now they are serving it to their guest.
The person takes a bite of cake and says, oh, I'm surprised that this tastes good.
I'm surprised that this tastes good.
Well, it might look like a compliment, kind of.
I mean, the person did say, this cake tastes good.
That's a nice thing to say.
That's a compliment.
That is an example of praising somebody for doing something well.
But it actually is more like an insult, because they're saying I assumed that your cake would not be good.
I assumed that you did not know how to make a cake.
I assumed that you would not do this well.
So it kind of looks like a compliment. but it is really more like an insult.
And that is what a backhanded compliment is.
And that is backhanded compliment, an interesting phrase that I think you should know.
This is the end of episode 467 of Everybody ESL.
Remember if you have questions about English, or if you have comments for me, or if you would like to record an introduction that I can play at the beginning of future episodes.
The same way, Gul'dan recorded the introduction you heard at the beginning of this episode.
Send an email to everybodyesl at gmailcom.
I'll be back soon with a new episode.
And until then, keep going, keep practicing and keep learning.
I'll see you soon.
Goodbye.
