Here is a sentence drawn from a contract for new condominium construction. "The laundry room flooring is a composition tile called Stonewalk; it is a warm light color that compliments all of the wood floor options." And here's a second sentence from the same contract: "bedroom carpets are a warm light color that compliments all of the wood floor options." Compliments? As every schoolchild is taught, "to compliment" means "to praise." The wording of the contract therefore asserts that Stonewalk, a composition tile, speaks highly of the wooden floor. The bedroom carpets join in the chorus of adulation. No doubt that it's a praiseworthy floor, but are the warm light carpets and the warm light tiles fully qualified to make so positive a determination?
Surely the highly-skilled and well-compensated lawyers who drew up the contract meant to write (if they subscribe to conventional canons of usage) that "the color of Stonewalk complements the color of the floors." That is to say, the one color "completes" or "makes perfect" the other.
For example: you may compliment the sommelier, but the sauvignon rouge complements the rosbif or the biftek. Them's the official rules.
But should they be? Is the distinction between compliment and complement meaningful? Or is it pedantic and arbitrary?
What can history tell us about these twins?
In Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost, Don Adriano de Armado is "a refined traveler of Spain..., /That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;/ One whom the music of his own vain tongue/ Doth ravish like enchanting harmony;/ [He is] a man of complements." But is a "man of complements" a courteous man who offers gratuitous compliments, or is he rather a fulfilled or a complete man. Clearly, Shakespeare's word conflates the two meanings. A second example, this one from King Lear: "There is further complement of leave-taking between Burgundy and [Lear]." Does "complement" mean, "politeness" or "formal civility," which would be "compliment"; or does it mean that Burgundy and Lear have finished or completed or brought to perfection their parting sentences? Once again, both meanings are possible. Examples of such blurring can be multiplied. Falstaff (in The Merry Wives of Windsor) says this: "I see you are obsequious in your love and I profess requital to a hair's breadth; not only, Mistress Ford, in the simple office of love, but in all the accoutrement, complxment, and ceremony of it." Complement, compliment; take your pick. Either is possible; both make perfectly good sense.
It's obvious that the doctrinaire distinction between the spellings has been imposed since the time of Shakespeare. In fact, the dictionaries tell us that the introduction of a second, separate word is an example of learned Frenchification. OED: "Compliment (Fr) is a doublet of complement (the form directly from Latin). The latter was in use before the introduction of the French form, which slowly took its place between 1635 and 1715." The twins have been, and still are, closer in meaning than traditionalists allow (which is why the condo contract writers got it, so to speak, "wrong").
What to do? My suggestion: let's overleap the conservatives and embrace the truly reactionary. Let's declare that from now on, "compliment" and "complement" are, just as they used to be, one and the same word. No more racking the brains over "i" and "e," no more anxiety, no more guilt.
Let the word go forth that from this moment on, tiles and carpets are free to complement or to compliment floors -- just as they prefer.
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