What do you think of this fact?
“Nice!” you might say when someone scores a great goal, rocks a new outfit, or the pizza finally shows up. But in medieval England, calling someone nice would have come across more like an insult.
In the beginning: clueless
“Nice” came into English in the late 13th century via Old French. Its root is the Latin “nescius,” “ignorant,” literally “not knowing.” And that’s exactly how “nice” was first used: according to Etymonline, it meant “foolish, ignorant, frivolous, senseless.” Merriam-Webster sums up the old meaning in a few words: “trivial; foolish or stupid.”
A journey through meanings
Then began a long wander through different meanings. Etymonline traces it roughly like this:
- before 1300: “timid, faint-hearted”
- late 14th century: “fussy, fastidious”
- around 1400: “dainty, delicate”
- 16th century: “precise, careful”
- 1769: “agreeable, delightful”
- 1830: “kind, thoughtful”
The “precise” sense still survives in phrases like “a nice distinction,” meaning a fine difference. And according to Merriam-Webster, “nice” can still sometimes mean “finicky,” as in having too nice a palate to enjoy fast food.
Too much of a good thing
Eventually, “nice” became an all-purpose word for anything vaguely good. Jane Austen was already poking fun at that in her novel Northanger Abbey, where a character remarks that the word does for everything. And in 1926, the usage writer Henry Fowler complained that “nice” had become such a favorite that it barely meant anything specific anymore.
From insult to compliment in a few centuries: that’s quite the comeback story for a single word.
“Bully” has made a U-turn too, just in the opposite direction: according to Merriam-Webster, it once meant “sweetheart, darling.”
From “stupid” to “awesome,” and nobody even noticed.