Damning with faint praise

::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) 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 The inversion "praising with faint damns" is more modern,Example: {{Cite journal The concept was widely used in literature in the eighteenth century, for example in Tobias Smollett's *Roderick Random*: "I impart some of mine to her – am mortified at her faint praise". ## Examples - 1917, Lucy Maud Montgomery, *The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career*: : "They wrote that 'Our readers report that they find some merit in your story, but not enough to warrant its acceptance. - 1940s, Winston Churchill, talking about Clement Attlee: : "A modest man with lots to be modest about." - 1975, Paul Grice, giving an example of conversational implicature: : 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." - 2009, interview with *Encyclopædia Britannica* president Jorge Cauz in the *Sydney Morning Herald*: : "... [Cauz] said a big problem was that many users considered Wikipedia to be 'fine' or 'good enough. - 2022, an internet meme that began with ironically praising the film *Morbius* as simply "one of the movies of all time", without any adjective. The quote would serve as a template for any popular culture work judged to be mediocre. See for additional detail on ironic reception of the film. ## References ## Sources - Ammer, Christine. (1997). *The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms.* New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ; - Browne, William Hardcastle. (1900). *Odd Derivations of Words, Phrases, Slang, Synonyms and Proverbs.* Philadelphia: Arnold. - Hirsch, Eric Donald Hirsch, Joseph F. Kett and James S. Trefil. (2002). *The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy.* Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ; ; - Ichikawa, Sanki. (1964). *The Kenkyusha Dictionary of Current English Idioms.* Tokyo: Kenkyusha. - 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. - Walsh, William Shepard. (1892). *Handy-book of Literary Curiosities.* Philadelphia: Lippincott. - __________. (1908). *The International Encyclopedia of Prose and Poetical Quotations from the Literature of the World.* Toronto: C. Clark. ## References 1. Ichikawa, Sanki. (1964). ''The Kenkyusha Dictionary of Current English Idioms,'' pp. 153–154. 2. Ammer, Christine. (2001). [https://books.google.com/books?id=9re1vfFh04sC&pg=PA153 ''The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms,'' p. 153.] 3. Walsh, William Shepard. (1908). [https://books.google.com/books?id=xAQoAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA586 ''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). [https://books.google.com/books?id=hrJkAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA211 ''Handy-book of Literary Curiosities,'' p. 211.] 5. Pope, Alexander. (1901) [https://books.google.com/books?id=xXciKdpaH0oC ''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,''[https://books.google.com/books?id=hrJkAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA211 pp. 211–212; n.b., ''see'' Canto vii in "The Purple Island."] 7. (1888). "The American: A National Journal". *American Company, Limited*. 8. Grice, H. P.. (1975). ["Logic and conversation"](http://courses.media.mit.edu/2004spring/mas966/Grice%20Logic%20and%20Conversation.pdf). 9. Hutcheon, Stephen. (22 January 2009). ["Watch out Wikipedia, here comes Britannica 2.0"](https://www.smh.com.au/technology/watch-out-wikipedia-here-comes-britannica-2-0-20090123-gdtarx.html). ::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise) and is available under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the [article history page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise?action=history). ::