can’t complain

Pretty good, in response to “How are things going?” This very modern-sounding phrase, which means one has nothing genuine to complain about (or at least will not admit it), comes from mid-nineteenth- century Britain. Eric Partridge cites an early example, R. S. Surtees’s Haw- buck Grange (1847), in which one character observes that time is passing lightly over another, who replies, “Middling—can’t complain.” Today it is a frequent response to inquiries about a business. See also FAIR TO MIDDLING.