compliment – English noun declension

English noun forms of compliment

Noun: compliment
Singularcompliment
Pluralcompliments

Sample Sentences

  • pay someone a compliment
  • […] I met him
  • With customary compliment; when he,
  • Wafting his eyes to the contrary and falling
  • A lip of much contempt, speeds from me and
  • So leaves me to consider what is breeding
  • That changeth thus his manners. [c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:]
  • [...] what honour that,
  • but tedious waste of time, to sit and hear
  • So many hollow compliments and lies,
  • Outlandish flatteries? [1671, John Milton, “The Fourth Book”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 65:]
  • Virtue indeed meets many a rhiming friend,
  • And many a compliment politely penn’d, [1782, William Cowper, “Table Talk”, in Poems, London: J. Johnson, page 37:]
  • He told the Captain, He was heartily sorry for his Misfortunes; tho’ in my Opinion that was nothing but a Compliment: For, as I found afterwards, he was more brutish, and dishonest, than most of the other Kings on the Island […] [1743, Robert Drury, The Pleasant, and Surprizing Adventures of Mr. Robert Drury, during his Fifteen Years Captivity on the Island of Madagascar, London, page 25:]
  • This accomplished man condescended to think of a young girl, and take the pains to talk to her, not with absurd compliment, but with an appeal to her understanding, and sometimes with instructive correction. [1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter III, in Middlemarch […], volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book I, page 48:]

Etymology

Borrowed from French compliment, itself a borrowing of Italian complimento, which in turn is a borrowing from Spanish cumplimiento, from cumplir (“to comply, complete, do what is proper”) + -miento or Latin complēmentum. Doublet of complement. Displaced Old English ġeswǣsnes. See: French Nouns 'compliment', Italian Nouns 'complimento', Spanish Nouns 'cumplimiento', Latin Nouns 'complēmentum'.