NICE

I learned a new word today. It is NICE. The word is NICE.

I learned that in Latin, the origin of the word, the word NICE means foolish.

Pronunciation:
'nIs
Function
adjective
adverb - nicely
noun - niceness
Etymology
Middle English, foolish, wanton,
Latin nescius ignorant,

Nice can be traced back to the Latin word nescius 'ignorant' which is actually a combination of the prefix ne 'no' and the word scire know - also the basis for the word science.

In other words, if you were nice, you did 'not know'.

This word is incredibly confounding. A century after its first appearance in print in English around 1300, nice took on widely divergent meanings, including 'timid', 'fussy', 'dainty' and 'strange'.

The word nice meant stupid and foolish in the late 13th Century. It went through a number of changes including wanton, extravagant, elegant, strange, modest, thin, and shy.

By the early 1500's, nice is being used to mean 'requiring great precision or accuracy'--nearly the opposite of its original meaning.(3 : possessing, marked by, or demanding great or excessive precision and delicacy )

The nice we're overwhelmed with today, meaning 'agreeable' first appears in print in 1769.

So have you been nice today?

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