Complement - compliment

These are two words that sound exactly the same (they are homophones).

• A compliment, or a complimentary remark, is something you say to someone (‘pay someone a compliment’) when you want to be nice: “What a nice dress!”, “That’s very clever”, “You played very well” etc.

Sometimes complimentary means ‘free’: e.g. complimentary tickets. These are things given because of the high esteem in which the giver holds the recipient. (Or not – sometimes they are merely an advertising gimmick!)

• A complement, or a complementary thing, is something that completes something else: e.g. a ship’s complement is her crew; one might say that an assignment has a complementary Guide to experimental techniques; yin is complementary to yang.

In grammar, a Complement is that which completes a sentence – most usually, the part of the sentence that follows the verb ‘to be’. For example, in the sentence “She is Scottish”, ‘Scottish’ is the Complement of ‘is’; in the sentence “This is Hull”, ‘Hull’ is the complement of ‘is’; and ‘Thursday’ is the complement of ‘is’ in “Today is Thursday” .

There is also the prepositional Complement, which is the name given to the noun or noun phrase that follows a preposition, such as ‘in town’, ‘at work’, or ‘the pen of my aunt’.