All language is mutable. Of necessity it changes as words need to be created so things which, not so long ago didn’t exist, can be described and explained.
The English language is one of the most changeable of languages. It has been described as several languages in a raincoat masquerading as a bigger language, with a habit of mugging yet other languages for spare words, phrases, grammar and punctuation.
We can see why when we look at the way words from Norse and Norman invaders to the now-British Isles introduced a slew of words into the language which would become English. The Angles and Saxons introduced the words which became pig and cow and sheep, the Normans the words that became pork and beef and mutton. There’s a separate discussion to be had on why both definitions were retained in English, but to be clear, that’s two different languages which now pretend to be one.
And as for acquired words, well they come from all over the world. Wherever Britain planted a flag and laid claim to the people, land, and wealth, they also took some words. Pyjamas, curry, bungalow, hammock, and buccaneer are just a few.
And then there are words which reach back into antiquity and can be traced from Greek or Latin.
Let’s take ‘nice’, as an example.
To call something nice is a complement. It may be the lowest of complements, the type you give when there is nothing else you can say without being, well, not nice, but it’s still a complement.
Having said that, in some places to say something is nice is to damn it with the faintest of praise. Some folks use it with a tone so dripping in sarcasm that were it to be converted to a physical liquid, it could dissolve rock all the way down until it reached magma.
Still, the word, at its core, remains positive, remains nice. And it has done so for the better part of four-hundred years, which is an awfully long time in a language as changeable as English.
Before then, though, it meant stupid, or ignorant. To be nice was to be unknowing, foolish, even gullible.
What happened?
Let’s start with the Latin roots of the word. The original Latin word nescire is comprised of two parts, ne and scire which literally translates to ‘not' & 'to know’ – that root scire is where we derive the word science from, and a plain derivative translation of science is, ‘to know’.
Anyway, nescire, not to know, became nescius, which meant ignorant. This is an interesting one, because there is already a Latin word for ignorant, ignorare. You may not be surprised to be told this is where we get the English words ignore and ignorant from.
But, hey, remember at the start we said language is mutable, and some Latin folks obviously felt there needed to be distinctions between types of not knowing.
Anyway, back to nescius. This passed into Old French and became the word we see now, nice - it's kind of interesting to note the French language has been doing away with parts of words for so many centuries, it's a shame the habit of making words resemble the sounds they are meant to represent was dropped. The Normans brought 'nice' to Britain in 1066, with a usage that covered a wide range of unbecoming habits: ignorance, foolishness, clumsiness, even senseless. Nice became part of the Middle English lexicography and retained meanings of foolishness and senselessness.
Over the next few hundred years the word went through a gentle transmogrification and became an increasingly pleasant adjective. The Oxford English Dictionary points out that in the sixteenth and seventeenth century it can be difficult to say what particular usage a writer intended. We can assume context helps in many cases, but there are clearly instances where it doesn’t.
Still, by the time Jane Austen is talking about ‘a nice day’, ‘nice walk’, and ‘nice young ladies’ in 1803’s Northanger Abbey it is considered to have become a word of vague and mild agreeableness – though I certainly would not put it past Miss Austen to be writing with a mind firmly on older meanings of the word even as she lays out a picture of gentility. Her writing is far cleverer than many a reader and, especially, non-reader will credit.
Here's the thing, from an original word meaning ‘not knowing’ we have ‘nice’ which starts out indicating stupidity and weakness but, over eight hundred years becomes something that indicates pleasure or satisfaction.
Where will the word go in the next eight hundred years?
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