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

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. 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. 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: The inversion "praising with faint damns" is more modern, though it goes as far back as 1888. 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".

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