 Welcome to English in a minute. A compliment is something nice you say to someone. But what is a backhanded compliment? Jonathan, Katie just told me my script was good, surprisingly good. That, my friend, is a backhanded compliment. Yes, she was surprised it was good. So she expected it to be bad. Oh, let it go, Anna. Backhanded or not, it's still a compliment. A backhanded compliment seems like a nice comment, but it's not. It's an insult made to look like a compliment. As you saw with Anna, backhanded compliments can upset people. And that's English in a minute.