My husband gave me a backhanded compliment the other day, and we both wondered the origin of that phrase. I checked both Word Detective and Quinion and some of the dictionaries, but couldn't find it. Does anyone know?
While searching I found a word that was described as its synonym, asteism. I hadn't heard the word before, but in reading its definition, it seems a little different. It is defined as "Genteel irony; a polite and ingenious manner of deriding another." I suppose it's similar, though I don't necessarily see a backhanded compliment as being genteel or polite.
The term used to be "lefthanded compliment" but "backhanded" took over either out of newly enlightened attitudes about lefthandedness, or because the phrase seemed ambiguous when describing a compliment coming from an actual lefthander.
As for its use, I think it can describe an insulting compliment regardless of what the speaker intended.
The prime example I remember reading about was an American football player who was at a school dance and told his dance partner, "Gee, you don;t sweat much for a fat girl."
Another one in the same vain that I like is "To damn with faint praise". In the house I grew up in, to say a meal was tasty, or a speach informative was to damn it with faint praise.
3. Ambiguous, doubtful, questionable. {dag}In medical language: Spurious.
1612 SIR G. PAULE Life Abp. Whitgift 44 [They] are close hypocrites and walke in a left-handed policie. 1625 GILL Sacr. Philos. I. 39 For the avoyding of some left-handed opinions concerning Him. 1650 B. Discolliminium 17 They are dextrously pragmatick in all Left-handed worke. 1735-8 BOLINGBROKE On Parties 2 There is need of that left-handed Wisdom. 1775 ADAIR Amer. Ind. 452 Lest necessity should compel her..to pay..dear for her left-handed wisdom. 1804Med. & Phys. Jrnl. XII. 63 The spurious left-handed inflammation of erysipelas. 1807-8 W. IRVING Salmag. xiii. (1860) 307 We are indebted to the world for little else than left-handed favors. 1809 MALKIN Gil Blas IV. vii. §18, I gave a left-handed blessing to Euphrasia. 1824-9 LANDOR Imag. Conv. Wks. 1846 II. 228 Thou hast some left-handed business in the neighbourhood, no doubt. 1881 SAINTSBURY Dryden i 6 To diminish the force of this very left-handed compliment. 1892Nation (N.Y.) 22 Dec. 481/3 Dr. White..had to put up with a left-handed Scotch ordination to his bishopric. 1899Law Jrnl. 11 Nov. 577/2 If this exemption..was designed as a concession to farmers, it is a curiously left-handed one. 1914 ‘HIGH JINKS, JR.’ Choice Slang 14 Left handed compliment, one that may be taken either as a compliment or in the opposite way. 1953Time 3 Aug. 36/1 An enthusiastic patter of applause came from the British press, including a left-handed compliment from the [i]Manchester Guardian that he was not at all like the movie-type American. 1972Ulster Folklife XVIII. 94 In the dialect of Donegal..left-handed betokens ‘malicious, underhand’; a left-handed blessing is a euphemism for a malediction or curse, and a left-handed friend is ‘an enemy’. 1974 A. DOUGLAS Noah's Ark Murders vi. 54 ‘I'm not trying to date you.’ ‘Well, that's a left-handed compliment,’ she complained.
damn, v.
to damn with faint praise and variants: to praise so half-heartedly or disingenuously as to imply condemnation. 1676 W. WYCHERLEY Plain-dealer Prol., And with faint praises one another damn. 1723 POPE in J. Markland Cythereia xii. 91 Damn with faint Praise, assent with civil Leer, And, without Sneering, teach the rest to Sneer. 1763Apol. for Monthly Rev. 25 If this be not to damn with faint praise, it is surely something worse. 1821 E. QUILLINAN Retort Courteous 23 Critics have oft assail'd my careless verse, Or damn'd it with faint praise, that direst curse. 1885Longman's Mag. Dec. 151 Could I not damn with faint praise and stab with sharp insinuendo? 1930Economica 29 204 It is invidious to damn with faint praise; but useful as the book may very well prove on occasion, one can hardly call it great or first-rate. 1970Jrnl. Eng. & Germanic Philol. 69 72 Contemporary criticism has tended to damn with faint praise by suggesting that Old English poems were largely collections of formulae indicative of oral composition. 2005Morning Star (Nexis) 31 Jan. 2 [He] suggests that employers now have less incentive to oppose unions because their impact on productivity and profits is so modest, which is to damn the unions with faint praise.
Notice insinuendo in the 1885 quote
quote:
insinuendo [A ‘portmanteau’ blending of INSINUATION and INNUENDO. A tasteless word.--R.W.B.] 1885 B. MATTHEWS in Longman's Mag. Dec. 151 Could I not damn with faint praise and stab with sharp insinuendo?--to use the labor-saving and much-needed word thoughtlessly invented by the sable legislator of South Carolina. 1906N. & Q. 3 Mar. 171/1 An old Yorkshire friend of mine..used the following words frequently. He thought they were good English:--‘Disastrophe’ = disaster + catastrophe, ‘Insinuendo’ = insinuation + innuendo. 1909Daily Chron. 9 June 6/7 It was a sable legislator who howled back with scorn the ‘insinuendos’ of a political opponent. 1921 C. MACKENZIE Rich Relatives ix. 216 Anyone more cunning I've never seen. Nasty insinuendos, enough to make anyone sick! 1966 P. MOLONEY (title) A plea for Mersey or the gentle art of insinuendo.
I came across this very word yesterday in a movie review in my evening newspaper. British members will immediately know what I mean when I say that it was referring to Kenneth Willams's style.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
