Bob's Short English Lessons Learn the English Phrases BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT and TO FISH FOR COMPLIMENTS
Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT and TO FISH FOR COMPLIMENTS
In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English term backhanded compliment. A compliment is something you say to someone that's kind of nice. Like if you said, "Your haircut looks good. Your new haircut looks good." Or, "Wow, you look really good in that shirt." But a backhanded compliment is when you give a compliment, but it's actually an insult. Here's a really good example. I use a lot of technology when I make these videos, but I'm also old. So a younger person could give me a backhanded compliment if they said, "Wow, you make really good videos for an old man." So basically they're saying something that sounds nice. "You make really good videos," but then they add the little phrase, "for an old man," which is kind of a little bit of an insult. By the way, no one's ever given me that backhanded compliment, but that would be a good example of what one would sound like.
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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to fish for compliments. When you fish for compliments, it means you're trying to get someone else to compliment you. You might say something like, "How's my hair look?" Or, "Hey, do you notice anything different about me today?" Both of those phrases would be considered someone fishing for compliments. So when you fish, you go to a river or lake and you try to catch a fish. When you fish for compliments, you say things to try and encourage the other person to say something nice to you. So you could say something like, I could say, "Hey, this is a pretty good video today, isn't it? Let me know in the comments." But you don't have to do that. That would just be me fishing for compliments.
Anyways, to review, a backhanded compliment is a compliment that sounds nice, but is actually an insult or kind of a little bit of an insult. And when you fish for of compliments, it means that you try to get someone else to give you compliments. Yeah, I do it sometimes. Sometimes when I get my haircut, I'll do it. Hey, I'm just putting my gloves on for a sec. It's a little colder than I thought out here.
Hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Noriko. "Wow. Those phrases are really funny. Your camera decided to just go upside down, but the wheels didn't fall off. It kept recording the nice view. Keep yourself warm, sir." In my response I said, "A long time ago, I used to cut out segments like that, but now I feel like it makes the video more authentic."
Yeah, when I first started doing these short videos, I would actually, if I made a little mistake like that or if the camera did something weird, I would edit that out because I thought, "Oh, I want my videos to be really, really good." Here, just a sec here. Oscar, hey, puppy. How you doing? There a little bit of a look at Oscar. Anyways, I used to cut those segments out, but now when something goes wrong while I'm videotaping these little lessons, I just keep the camera running because I feel like it's more authentic.