Sometimes, a sec­ond-hand com­pli­ment is bet­ter than a first-hand one. It means that there’s some­thing the com­pli­ment giv­er does­n’t want one to know, as if it’s a weak­ness. Of course, one should always ques­tion how some­one comes across this infor­ma­tion, and their motives for let­ting one know what oth­ers may con­sid­er a secret that can be used against a per­son.