THE ETYMOLOGY NERD
  • Home
  • ALGOSPEAK
  • Infographics
    • Interactive Map
  • EVENTS
  • MORE
    • Shop
    • Media/publicity

NICE ETYMOLOGY

7/27/2017

1 Comment

 
The word nice is an etymological hot mess, so bear with me for several moments. When it entered English in the 1300s, it meant "foolish". Yes, that's right. It gets better: later it meant "timid", "fussy", "delicate", "careful", "doubtful", and "strict". Basically, throughout its history, nice assumed the role of sort of a jack-of-all-trades word. It was very difficult to tell what people meant much of the time, and many writers like Shakespeare and Austen played with their words based on this premise. The modern definition started to emerge in the eighteenth century, but it was still confusing. Eventually, highborn people gentrified the word; they wanted the prettiest meaning to prevail. That's what happened, and why it means "pleasant" today. Going back to the beginning, nice ("foolish") came from Old French nisce, or "ignorant", from Latin nescius, also "ignorant", from the verb form nescire. Now, nescire is a compound of ne-, a prefix meaning "not", and scire, a root meaning "to know". Scio, through Proto-Italic skijo, is from the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction skios, a word for "dissect", sonething that's done in intellectual thought and is therefore connected to knowledge. So many definitions; it's kind of nice that no one need know what you mean!
1 Comment
Bridget
8/29/2022 10:22:18 pm

thank you for caring about language

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    AUTHOR

    Picture
    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic. You're looking at a super outdated page

    Archives

    December 2023
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016

    TAGS

    All
    Interview
    Satire

Picture
CONTACT: [email protected]
SUBSTACK • TIKTOK • INSTAGRAM • YOUTUBE
I do not have a facebook account that's an impostor
  • Home
  • ALGOSPEAK
  • Infographics
    • Interactive Map
  • EVENTS
  • MORE
    • Shop
    • Media/publicity