complement or compliment
Originally these two spellings were used interchangeably, but they havecome to be distinguished from each other in modern times. Most of thetime the word people intend is “compliment": nice things said aboutsomeone ("She paid me the compliment of admiring the way I shined myshoes.”). “Complement,” much less common, has a number of meaningsassociated with matching or completing. Complements supplement eachother, each adding something the others lack, so we can say that“Alice’s love for entertaining and Mike’s love for washing dishescomplement each other.” Remember, if you’re not making nice to someone,the word is “complement.”A complement can also be the full number of something needed to make it complete: “my computer has a full complement of video-editing programs.” If it is preceded by “full” the word you want is almost certainly “complement.”See also
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