Picture someone handing over praise the way you hand over a coin: the words are pleasant, but they are being spent on something. You look wonderful, that was brilliant, nobody else could have done it — and then, a moment later, the request. The whole word lives in that gap between how sweet the words sound and why they were said. That is also why naming it is an act of seeing through it: calling something flattery tells your listener you did not buy it.
From the word’s history
From Middle English flaterye, from Old French flaterie, built on the verb flater 'to flatter' with the ending -y that makes abstract nouns. From the start the word named the practice of sweet-talking, not the praise itself.
來自中古英文 flaterye，再往前是古法文 flaterie，由動詞 flater（奉承）加上造抽象名詞的字尾 -y 組成。從一開始它指的就是「說好聽話的那套做法」，不是稱讚本身，所以它天生帶著不信任。
Wiktionary entry 'flattery': 'From Middle English flaterye, flaterie, from Old French flaterie, from the verb flater... By surface analysis, flatter + -y.' (packet source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:886396188)
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