To install click the Add extension button. That's it.

The source code for the WIKI 2 extension is being checked by specialists of the Mozilla Foundation, Google, and Apple. You could also do it yourself at any point in time.

4,5
Kelly Slayton
Congratulations on this excellent venture… what a great idea!
Alexander Grigorievskiy
I use WIKI 2 every day and almost forgot how the original Wikipedia looks like.
Live Statistics
English Articles
Improved in 24 Hours
Added in 24 Hours
What we do. Every page goes through several hundred of perfecting techniques; in live mode. Quite the same Wikipedia. Just better.
.
Leo
Newton
Brights
Milds

Damning with faint praise

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Damning with faint praise is an English idiom, expressing oxymoronically that half-hearted or insincere praise may act as oblique criticism or condemnation.[1][2] In simpler terms, praise is given, but only given as high as mediocrity, which may be interpreted as passive-aggressive.

YouTube Encyclopedic

  • 1/2
    Views:
    609
    336
  • 🔵 Damn with Faint Praise Meaning - Damn with Faint Praise Examples - Damn With Faint Praise - Idioms
  • Damn with faint praise Meaning

Transcription

History of the term

The concept can be found in the work of the Hellenistic sophist and philosopher Favorinus (c. 110 CE) who observed that faint and half-hearted praise was more harmful than loud and persistent abuse.[3]

The explicit phrasing of the modern English idiomatic expression was first published by Alexander Pope in his 1734 poem, "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" in Prologue to the Satires.[4]

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.
— "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" by Alexander Pope (1688–1744)[5]

According to William Shepard Walsh, "There is a faint anticipation in William Wycherley's Double Dealer, "and libels everybody with dull praise," But a closer parallel is in Phineas Fletcher:

When needs he must, yet faintly then he praises,
Somewhat the deed, much more the means he raises:
So marreth what he makes, and praising most, dispraises.
— "The Purple Island" by Phineas Fletcher[6]

The inversion "praising with faint damns" is more modern,[7] though it goes as far back as 1888.[8]

The concept was widely used in literature in the eighteenth century, for example in Tobias Smollet's Roderick Random - "I impart some of mine to her - am mortified at her faint praise".

Examples

"They wrote that 'Our readers report that they find some merit in your story, but not enough to warrant its acceptance'."
A professor is writing a testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a philosophy job, and his letter reads as follows: "Dear Sir, Mr. X's command of English is excellent, and his attendance at tutorials has been regular. Yours, etc."[9]
"… [Cauz] said a big problem was that many users considered Wikipedia to be 'fine' or 'good enough'."[10]
  • 2022, an internet meme that began with praising the film Morbius as simply "one of the movies of all time". The quote would serve as a template for any popular culture work judged to be mediocre.

See also

References

  1. ^ Ichikawa, Sanki. (1964). The Kenkyusha Dictionary of Current English Idioms, pp. 153–154.
  2. ^ Ammer, Christine. (2001). The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, p. 153.
  3. ^ Walsh, William Shepard. (1908). The International Encyclopedia of Prose and Poetical Quotations from the Literature of the World, p. 586, citing Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae. xi, 3, 1.
  4. ^ Walsh, William Shepard. (1909). Handy-book of Literary Curiosities, p. 211.
  5. ^ Pope, Alexander. (1901) The Rape of the Lock: An Essay on Man and Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, p. 97; n.b., see line 201 in "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot."
  6. ^ Walsh, William Shepard, Handy-book of Literary Curiosities,pp. 211–212; n.b., see Canto vii in "The Purple Island."
  7. ^ Example: Hattie, John and Peddie, R. (January 2003). "School reports: "Praising with faint damns"". Set: Research Information for Teachers. 3: 4–9. doi:10.18296/set.0710.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. ^ Robert Ellis Thompson; Wharton Barker (1888). The American: A National Journal. American Company, Limited. p. 137.
  9. ^ Grice, H. P. (1975), Logic and conversation (PDF), p. 33
  10. ^ Hutcheon, Stephen (22 January 2009). "Watch out Wikipedia, here comes Britannica 2.0". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 8 July 2023.

Sources

  • Ammer, Christine. (1997). The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-395-72774-4; OCLC 228041670
  • Browne, William Hardcastle. (1900). Odd Derivations of Words, Phrases, Slang, Synonyms and Proverbs. Philadelphia: Arnold. OCLC 23900443
  • Hirsch, Eric Donald Hirsch, Joseph F. Kett and James S. Trefil. (2002). The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-618-22647-4; ISBN 978-0-9657664-3-2; OCLC 50166721
  • Ichikawa, Sanki. (1964). The Kenkyusha Dictionary of Current English Idioms. Tokyo: Kenkyusha. OCLC 5056712
  • Pope, Alexander and Henry Walcott Boynton. (1901). The Rape of the Lock. An essay on Man and Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co. OCLC 3147633
  • Walsh, William Shepard. (1892). Handy-book of Literary Curiosities. Philadelphia: Lippincott.OCLC 247190584
  • __________. (1908). The International Encyclopedia of Prose and Poetical Quotations from the Literature of the World. Toronto: C. Clark. OCLC 22391024

External links

This page was last edited on 22 February 2024, at 15:21
Basis of this page is in Wikipedia. Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported License. Non-text media are available under their specified licenses. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. WIKI 2 is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wikimedia Foundation.