Nice
adjectivePleasant, agreeable, or giving satisfaction.
How to spell nice
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce nice
What does nice mean?
- adjectivePleasant, agreeable, or giving satisfaction.
Nice in a sentence
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They enjoyed a nice meal at the new restaurant downtown.
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The weather was nice enough for a long walk along the coast.
Where does nice come from?
Language of origin: Latin
Nice is a striking example of how a word can completely reverse its meaning over the centuries. It traces back to the Latin nescius, meaning 'ignorant' or 'not knowing', formed from ne ('not') and the verb scire ('to know'), the same root that gives us 'science'. English borrowed it through Old French around the 1300s, and at first 'nice' meant 'foolish' or 'silly'. From there it drifted to 'fussy' and 'precise', a sense that survives in phrases like 'a nice distinction', before finally settling in the 1700s on the warm, approving sense of 'pleasant' or 'agreeable' that we use today. Because the spelling is short and phonetic, the only real trap is remembering that the soft 'c' sound is written with a 'c' and an 'e', not an 's'.
How the word is built
- nice (single root, originally from Latin nescius: ignorant); no productive prefix or suffix in the modern form
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