お世辞(せじ)

お世辞(せじ) is praise offered to please the listener rather than to report an honest opinion — the compliment that smooths a social occasion. Calling something お世辞(せじ) implies it may not be sincere, so it is not normally used of one's own praise except to disclaim it.

Formation: お (polite prefix) + 世辞(せじ) 'compliment'. The bare 世辞(せじ) exists but is rarely used alone; the お form is the ordinary word.

Collocations

• お世辞(せじ)を言(い)う: to pay someone a compliment
• お世辞(せじ)が上手(じょうず): good at flattery
• お世辞(せじ)抜(ぬ)きで: frankly, flattery aside
• お世辞(せじ)にも〜ない: can't call it ~ even generously — a fixed frame for polite understatement, as in example 3

Similar words

• 褒(ほ)め言葉(ことば): words of praise, with no implication of insincerity
• おべっか: brown-nosing, sucking up — openly negative
• 追従(ついしょう): fawning, sycophancy (formal, strongly negative)
• 社交辞令(しゃこうじれい): social pleasantries — the wider category of things said for form's sake