As polite compliments go, "clean" is rock bottom: if you want to not praise someone or something, praise its hygiene.
I could well believe this, since I myself felt embarrassingly attracted by his slight, wiry body; by his polite compliments that were never disrespectful but let me know that, at any time of my choosing, things between us could take a fresh turn.
I think mostly they say it because they think the English like to hear it, and it's polite to compliment the odd customs of foreigners in their own homes.
Keep your compliments polite!
Be aware that in some cultures, it is considered polite to deny compliments and impolite to accept them.
"Any decent human being, interested or not, will take polite flirtation as the compliment it is".
Blake, being a well-brought-up Englishman, takes compliments with a polite smile and a "That's nice", but he knows he has made his mark.
Women who approached me, on the other hand, almost always asked polite questions or offered kind compliments.
Yolanda feels as though she has sacrificed her principles and sold out to the hyper-sensitive authorities when her father forces her to discard her empowering, rebellious achievement of artistic self-expression for "two brief pages of stale compliments and the polite commonplaces on teachers.
Give others compliments to be polite, and stay away from saying anything which could be interpreted as an insult.
