Left-handed compliment may be a term you don't hear very often; so, for those not sure what it means, I'll explain. It means someone is trying to be gentle and not hurt your feelings, but at the same time they feel they have to tell you something you don't want to hear. So they make it sound nice—sort of—whereas it's really telling you bad news. Dissing you.
An example: A friend of mine reported to me that he was taking some sort of art or painting class. The teacher, he said, told him, "You have a very interesting sense of color." Translation: "Dude, you have no idea what colors to put together. Not a clue. Whatsoever." I have to hope that friend won't read this because he never knew that he had been anything other than complimented. The teacher accomplished her mission. Take a bow.
Two from my own life: I was taking a playwriting course in college. I asked the professor—tactlessly—whether he thought I had any talent. He was more tactful than I was, and replied, "I think you have some of the symptoms of talent." I had to ponder what that meant, but today I'd translate it thusly: "You're fucked up like a lot of talented people, but that doesn't mean that you've got even a single molecule of talent in your entire body."
A few years later I was a graduate student at the prestigious University of M_____. One time I was talking to the department chairman in his office, and he said to me, "You seem to have the right instincts." Now, what the hell does that mean? It must mean, "At times you look like you incline toward doing the right thing, but you absolutely are not going to be a superstar." Hard to tell if that's a true left-handed compliment or a kindred tactic, damning with faint praise. That's similar in that it seems, at first blush, to be saying something nice about you but, if you scratch the surface, you see it really is not a sincere or genuine compliment.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
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