So: How can one word serve as the appropriate response to both impending doom and caffeine breaks? The negative connotations ballooned from there. Dive deeper into the Middle Ages, and the meaning deflated. The word started to hint not at ostentation or cowardice but shyness and reserve; not in a negative way, but certainly not yet positively.
Folks in the 17th and 18th centuries, though, they loved modesty. Just consider the clothes. Merriam-Webster, another fine purveyor of diction, provides a few examples of past and considerably different usages on its blog :. May we not this day read our sin in our punishment? O what nice and wanton appetites, what curious and itching ears, had thy people in the dayes of plenty? We were properly introduced. It was quite all right! It does for everything. It is the tardigrade of words.
Nice guys. Nice moves. Nice memes. Nice weather. Because, well, it works. Linguistic prescriptivists or persnickety elementary school teachers would disagree. Why say someone or something is nice when you can be more specific? But descriptivists would recognize the utility of having such a nimble and ambiguous word, if, for nothing else, save the fact that it provides room for great jokes.
The U. How nice, but what do we get? We both know about sex. Congratulations to us on our base-level sexual knowledge. The next four years will change America forever. But HuffPost won't back down when it comes to providing free and impartial journalism. For the first time, we're offering an ad-free experience to qualifying contributors who support our fearless newsroom.
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