On Being “Nice”

The word “nice” is, as my old English teacher would have said, an over-used and useless adjective. In fact he was so obsessed by a loathing of the word that we were forbidden to use it in any written work. The trouble is that now, some thirty-five years later, we seem to have grown reliant on that small four-letter word for our every utterance. So over-used is it, that it has no “clout” to speak of in the world of description. So weak has it become that its use as a compliment could even be seen as damning with faint praise.

Try having a “nice-free” day and you’ll soon be left struggling for the right word to use in its place and that can be very awkward. Can you imagine meeting your friend for a coffee and saying something like “Hi! That’s a really attractive shirt you’re wearing” or “The food is excellent here”, or, even odder, “You look beautiful”. She would probably think you were behaving very strangely, as we have come to expect that everyone will use “nice” to describe everything. Any variance may be perceived as being loaded with some “other” meaning such as sarcasm, spite or irony. However, my “nice” replacements are perfectly correct and they describe the noun beautifully – or should that be nicely? Just joking!

I suppose laziness is to blame. We have found a “nice” word that covers all the ranges of descriptions that we may need. We use “nice” instead of having to think of (and choose between) excellent, good, beautiful, attractive, tasty, enjoyable, pretty, kind, polite, friendly, pleasant, clean… and so on and on and on. Just look it up in your Roget’s Thesaurus! But if “nice” means all these things and more, then isn’t it actually meaning-less? The joy of the English language is that it is blessed with a huge range of words meaning almost (but never quite) the same thing and this allows us to be (with some effort) blindingly accurate in our description of anything.

But “nice” can also be given all kinds of meanings that don’t relate simply to description. For example, I once knew an elderly lady who used to describe any young women of her acquaintance, as “nice” girls or “not nice” and she was not describing their appearance or their personality – this was a direct assessment of their sexual morals. This use of “nice” could actually be seen as more accurate than all our own lazy “generalisms”, as the dictionary also defines “nice” as meaning “fastidious” and “refined”. Conversely, children who are said to “come from a nice family” are probably less accurately perceived as having good manners, middle-class values, education, breeding (whatever that means!), money, good taste or strong morals.

“Nice” has become the conversational staple of the hairdresser and the checkout cashier. When I’m asked, “Going anywhere nice tonight?”, I always feel that to answer “No, just staying at home.”, seems to say something negative about my living conditions. Even worse, the hackneyed, transatlantic “Have a nice day!” always makes me cringe, so often has it been ridiculed in sit-coms. As I reply, “And you!”, I pity the shop assistant and the manager that insists that she repeats it to every single customer. I loathe the commercial system that thinks we are stupid enough to believe it to be sincere. Not nice!

So that’s it – nice is so weak it’s virtually useless – it even needs “add-ons” to make it remotely emphatic, for example, “Nice one!”, meaning “Well done! It’s great”, or, sarcastically, the complete opposite (see what I mean?). Then there is “Very nice” – with the stress on “very” which also means either actually very good or the complete opposite.

That’s it I’m finished – call the “Nice” police – it’s an emergency.

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