Pylimitics

Wouldn’t it be nice if English words, once they meant something specific, just retained that meaning? Well, it might be nice, but it definitely wouldn’t be “nice.” The word “nice,” over the many, many years the word has existed, had these meanings: silly, lascivious, ostentatious, scrupulous, fastidious, polite, respectable, cowardly, lazy, delicate, strange, shy, undecided, subtle, precise, thin, unimportant, sensitive, and requiring tact. 

“Nice” arrived in English in 1066 during the Norman invasion. At the time it was an Old French word meaning silly. By 1300, Middle English had developed out of Old English and Old French (and various other bits and pieces, of course), and “nice” was by then an English word meaning ignorant. 

About a century later, something nice (strange) happened to “nice,” and its usage became not very nice (precise) at all. English writers at that time almost all knew French and Latin as well as English (which wasn’t even English yet; it was “Anglo-Norman”), and they knew what “nice” originally meant. But writing in English seemed to give them license to use the word however they wanted (this attitude seems to have persisted). They felt no need to be nice (scrupulous) or nice (polite) about it. They probably just concluded that since it was English, it was nice (unimportant). Most of the long list of meanings for “nice” are first seen around 1390, and even some of the meanings that contradict each other lasted for centuries. 

Chaucer uses “nice” in The Squire’s Tale, and means ‘foolish.’ But then in The Summoner’s Tale, which, if you’ll recall, is in the same book, he uses “nice” again, but means clever and cunning. 

The modern meaning of “nice” is, of course, pleasant, agreeable, and attractive. “Nice” didn’t come to that meaning until about 1750. Whatever else you want to say about “nice,” the word has certainly never been nice (lazy).