Are you fishing for compliments?

“Ohh, I have become so fat”, she said.
Her friend replied, “Tell you what, you are not fat. Are you fishing for compliments?”

Ever since Mohit came back from the US, his spoken English has tremendously improved. He is much more confident and is very impressive the way he presents himself. However, I found it strange last night when he met his old school friends and was continuously fishing for compliments.

“Fish for compliments” – that’s our target phrase for this post. Let’s take one more example of this spoken English phrase in action and then go on to discuss the meaning.

Smita was fishing for compliments in the party for her new hairstyle. It was quite natural too – she had just changed her hairstyle and everyone loves compliments.

Fish for compliments means trying to get others to praise you. One of the ways people do this is by being excessively humble and criticizing themselves.

Suman looked gorgeous in her new blue dress, chatting with her friends.

“I have become so fat”, she said, I can’t fit into any of my old dresses”.

One of her friends, Sujata was clearly not amused. “Are you fishing for compliments?”, Sujata said, “I mean, I would give my right arm for a body like that”

OR,

Sanju is the body builder of his group of friends. He sweats it out in the gym for 2 hours everyday and eats a lot of protein supplements. However, whenever you meet him, he would always complain of how his body has become so thin and how his biceps are not growing. I think he is just fishing for compliments. I mean, most of us would die for biceps like his.

When someone tries to get others to praise him by deliberately trying to project himself as bad in something he is actually good at, you’d say he is fishing for compliments. That’s a better way and a mark of finer spoken English skills.

Let’s take a couple more examples:

1. You speak such good English and you are saying that your spoken English needs improvement? That too in front of us who cant speak one correct sentence. Are you fishing for compliments?
2. Tell you what? You know you are not fat. You are only fishing for compliments.