If something is praiseworthy, it deserves a kind word: people look at the effort and think it was a good thing to try. You use it more about acts, tries, and aims than about a person as a whole. Though actually, the result does not have to be a full success. A plan can fail on the last step and still be praiseworthy, because the heart of it, or the hard work, still deserves praise. It is a warm but rather careful word — you meet it in school comments, speeches, and writing more than in chat. It is stronger than “nice” and gentler than “excellent”: it talks about worth, not about winning.