Nice means pleasing, agreeable,
delightful and much more. It has so many meanings that the word can be applied
to almost everything we consider “nice”. It comes from the Latin nescius, silly, foolish, ignorant. Its
meaning has been changing from timid to fussy, and from fussy and fastidious to
delicate, and then agreeable and kind. People use words, and give them new
meanings, out of ignorance, or perhaps as an attempt to be playful and
fashionable, and “different”.
The Spanish necio did not evolve or change, and
has retained the original meaning of ignorant, silly, foolish. (DRAE: “Necio.
Ignorante y que no sabe lo que podía y debía saber.”) Both necio and nice come from the same root but now
have different meanings.
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