nice

nice

The word nice is the great cause célèbre of meaning change in English. In medieval and Renaissance literature, nice (derived from Latin nescius meaning ‘ignorant’) has a wide range of generally unfavourable meanings such as ‘foolish, stupid’ and ‘wanton, loose-mannered’, and in some cases it is not possible to be sure which meaning was intended. The meanings to do with precision and fine distinctions (as in a nice point or distinction) arose in the 16c, and are still in use, but they are now swamped by the generalized favourable use of nice to mean ‘agreeable, pleasant’:

• All her furniture is second-hand and rather nice —J. Rose, 1990

• I have three children of my own now and I thought it would be nice to surprise them with the sugar mice on the tree, and also the chocolate cat —Catherine Cookson, 1990.

There is no doubt that nice is greatly overused in this meaning, and critics have some reason to call it a ‘lazy word’ (i.e. inducing laziness in its users). Many synonyms, often more apposite and stronger in meaning, are available (good, pleasant, enjoyable, fine, agreeable, satisfying, etc.) and it is often better to use them, but in conversation nice has established itself too well and too idiomatically for cautionary advice to have any real point:

• I thought the shoulder of lamb would be much nicer and it looked nice and fresh! —conversation recorded in the British National Corpus, 1992.

Nice is used idiomatically followed by and in a quasi-adverbial role to introduce a positive adjective:

• Talk to her in your best, professorial manner, make her think how nice and kind you are —Nina Bawden, 1989

• Pour the warm water from the teapot into the cup you're going to use, so that the cup gets nice and warm too —weblog, AusE 2004 [OEC].

The OED traces this use back to the end of the 18c with a quotation from Fanny Burney:

• Just read this little letter, do, Miss, do —it won't take you much time, you reads so nice and fast —Camilla, 1796.

It has always been largely restricted to conversational contexts, where it is deeply embedded in the language; it can easily seem precious and affected in writing, except when this is recording conversation.