Being called “nice” today feels like a compliment ― if a slightly underwhelming or even backhanded one. But if someone had called you nice 700 years ago, you would have been right to take offense.
Like many words in the English language, “nice” has a rather dramatic origin story, evolving from an outright insult to the more pleasant term we know today. In many ways, its meaning seems to have done a complete 180, and it might even be moving back in the direction it came from.
“Nice comes from the Latin ‘nescius,’ meaning ‘ignorant,’” Sophie Vignoles, a linguist and head of learning content at the language learning app Babbel, told HuffPost. “It entered English by way of French, where it originally meant ‘foolish’ or ‘silly.’ Someone called nice in the 1300s was being insulted, not praised.”
The shift from “ignorant” and “foolish” to “kind” and “agreeable” did not happen overnight.
“It softened in stages over several centuries, moving from foolish to fussy or overly particular, to precise and careful, before settling on pleasant and agreeable by around the 1700s,” Vignoles explained.
