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pay a compliment
Idioms and Phrases
Express praise or commendation to someone, as in Meredith wanted to pay Christopher a compliment so she told him she liked his new haircut . This expression uses pay in the sense of “give something that is due.†[c. 1700]Example Sentences
“Your friend’s speech was very...interesting,†she said, trying to pay a compliment but struggling to do so.
“You mathematician! I wish you could at least pay a compliment without arithmetic! Eight from nineteen is eleven. Twice as pretty every year...Goodness, I’m twenty-two times as pretty!â€
“We have traveled so much and had to adapt so much, the bio-rhythms and everything else. It was really difficult and I have to pay a compliment to my team for how they have reacted. No one has been moaning.â€
I considered interrupting her routine to pay a compliment.
Echoed again and again is the advice to "pay a compliment."
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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