In Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, it is asserted that the word nice meant (back in the time of witch burnings, so 1600s, maybe?) accurate or precise. Is that true?
IMO there is no better discussion of the word “nice” than that offered by Henry Tilney in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, written in 1803:
Oh, and we still preserve the original sense of “nice” in one or two idioms such as “a nice distinction”, meaning a subtle or fine distinguishing of things that often get lumped together. E.g.:
And, of course, the original meaning of nice was foolish, from the Latin nescius, ignorant. (Compare the modern word from the same root, nescience.)
The Oxford English Dictionary gives a ton of former meanings to “nice.” In addition to “precise” there’s: foolish, wanton, showy, finely dressed/elegant, fussy/difficult to please, refined/cultured, Fastidious in matters of literary taste or style, virtuous, proper/in good taste, faint-hearted/cowardly/unmanly, lazy/sluggish, tender/fragile, pampered/luxurious, rare/extraordinary, shy/coy, demanding close consideration, subtle, thin/unsubstantial, trivial, sensitive/acute (of senses), dextrous, discriminative of judgment, doubtful, requiring tact…
And much much more!
What a busy word.
This reminds me of a conversation I had regarding the word thorough.
We were looking at someone’s resume and the woman next to me commented, “Wow, he’s very thorough, isn’t he?”
I was mystified as to how she could tell he was thorough just by looking at the resume. When I asked how she could tell, she thought I was criticizing the person who was subject of the resume. It got very uncomfortable.
I’m not sure what you mean here. In the sense that I know the word, and given the situation, I would assume that the woman meant he was very detailed and specific in his resume.
There’s also the phrase " a nice point of law " meaning an issue that raises some interesting points that could be argued either way.
That’s the problem … it was clearly not what she meant. Besides the fact that it was not a particularly detailed resume – just your standard summary of education and experience – from what I gathered, she meant something like “He has very impressive experience” or something like that. I wondered if it was some kind of usage specific to African-American vernacular.
After his victory at the Battle of Waterloo Wellington is quoted as saying (bolding mine) “It has been a damned serious business - Blücher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing - the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life…By God! I don’t think it would have done if I had not been there.” Make of that what you will.
Kasper Gutman to Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon: “Quite frankly sir, I’d like to have you along. You’re a man of nice judgment and many resources.”
In that context, “nice” seems to mean discerning rather than pleasing.
And in my dictionary, the third definition given for “nice” is, "characterized by or requiring great accuracy, precision, skill or delicacy: nice workmanship.
So it still means accurate!
I love learning archaic definitions of words.
One of my favorites is ‘silly’, which of course means foolish or lacking good sense. But it came to that definition after originally meaning ‘blessed’ or ‘innocent’ in Middle English.
So if you call someone’s religion ‘silly’, you’re praising it?