nice == ignorant?
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nyce, nice, nys, from Old French nice, niche, nisce (“simple, foolish, ignorant”), from Latin nescius (“ignorant, not knowing”); compare nesciō (“to know not, be ignorant of”), from ne (“not”) + sciō (“to know”).
From The Taming of the Shrew, Act III, scene i:
Old fashions please me best, I am not so nice
To charge true rules for old inuentions.
KeithB said,
December 26, 2025 @ 10:00 pm
I always found it interesting that "Blessing" comes from "Blood"
DCBob said,
December 26, 2025 @ 10:02 pm
And thus, our current president is the nicest ever ….
Barbara Phillips Long said,
December 27, 2025 @ 1:09 am
Link to joke I heard around 1990, which has colored my view of "nice" ever since:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/6ly03s/thats_nice/
Cedar said,
December 27, 2025 @ 2:11 pm
The sense of "ignorant" for "nice" tracks for me, when I hear West Coast elite use the phrase "Midwest nice".
And on these occasions, "Midwest nice" ostensibly just means "rather noticeably nice".
But I always sense a twinge of the implied ignorance. The implication might not even be understood by the speaker.
Cuconnacht said,
December 27, 2025 @ 3:57 pm
If Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey had been aware of the etymology, perhaps he would have insisted that "nice" should only be used to mean "ignorant":
'But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?'
'The nicest – by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.'
'Henry,' said Miss Tilney, 'you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is forever finding fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking the same liberty with you. The word 'nicest,' as you used it, did not suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way.'
'I am sure,' cried Catherine, 'I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?'
'Very true,' said Henry, 'and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement – people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.'
'While, in fact,' cried his sister, 'it ought only to be applied to you, without any commendation at all. You are more nice than wise. Come, Miss Morland, let us leave him to meditate over our faults in the utmost propriety of diction, while we praise Udolpho in whatever terms we like best.
Brett Altschul said,
December 27, 2025 @ 6:56 pm
@Cuconnacht: Northanger Abbey is a dreadful book. The fact that the author also wrote some brilliant novels should not blind us to the fact that that particular book is terrible.
Peter Grubtal said,
December 28, 2025 @ 5:28 am
The taming of the shrew quotation : isn't that in the sense of subtle or fastidious?
Had the sense of "ignorant" survived from the middle English period?
AntC said,
December 28, 2025 @ 6:03 am
==
BTW, is this doubled-equals <a href="https://wiki.c2.com/?CeeLanguage"CeeLanguage creeping in? Real Programmers use single `=` for that, and `:=` (or back-arrow) for assignment.