Do you say left handed or back handed

[LeftOrBack]

for compliments that are really insults?

YABU - back handed compliment
YANBU - left handed

Left handed sounds right to me.

Back handed eg with your hand behind your back indicating a level of deviousness.

Back-handed.
It's got nothing to do with being left-handed.

I've only ever heard backhanded. I'd only use left handed to describe a left-handed person or an object designed for them like left-handed scissors.

Left handed sounds right to me.

How can it sound right when it’s literally not a saying?

Backhanded. Left handed is someone who writes with their left hand, as I do. Never heard it used for anything else.

I've googled it and apparently it is! I've never heard it though.

Back handed.

Using left handed in that sense sounds like an insult to left handed people.

It literally is a saying! I’ve heard people use back handed too though.

Back handed

Left handed means cack handed (both are outdated)

Back handed

Left handed sounds right to you because it's already a saying to describe someone who is left handed

As @Comefromaway states, it is "back-handed" - indicating a level of deviousness. But interesting to see that "left-handed" exists in the same realm. I had never heard of that until this post!

It’s back handed.

offensive against left handed people otherwise

This.

I'm left handed.

I'm not back handed

Back handed compliments.

My son was convinced that the L plate on cars denoted the fact they were left handed.

Maybe back handed compliment is the more polite and up to date version but traditionally I think it was always a ‘left handed compliment’.

I've heard back handed, never left handed. Both may be expressions but one seems far more common.

This has tickled me quite hard!

I've only ever heard back handed. As a left hander I really don't love the idea of a 'left handed compliment' being used like this - thankfully most of the shit said about or done to lefties has been left in the past now.

I think I will train myself to say ‘double edged comment’ next time I accuse someone of giving me a left handed compliment.

A back handed compliment isn’t double edged though. It’s an insult dressed up as a compliment.

I really don’t think it was. Try asking how many people here have ever heard of the phrase “left handed compliment”.

Cack handed sounds awful 💩

It probably made more sense when there was a lot of negativity around behind left handed.

Literally nobody will understand what on earth you are on about if you say “left-handed compliment”.

Back handed isn’t a modern PC way of saying “left handed”, my grandparents would have said “back handed compliment” and they were born in the 1910s.

It's never been left handed you've picked that up wrongly somewhere