Aphorisms and Idioms: It’s Nice To Be Important, But More Important To Be Nice.

L
ike many mothers, my mom drilled the importance of being nice into my young psyche.  She used expressions like the direct and simple “be nice” to impart this lesson. As well as Thumper the rabbit’s ever-popular pearl of wisdom “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”  Not to mention Jimmy Durante’s “be nice to people on the way up, because you meet them on the way down.”[1]

And, then there’s the adage “it’s nice to be important, but more important to be nice.” These days, this aphorism is more relevant than ever.

We’ve heard it attributed to the likes of actor Tony Curtis, philanthropist John Templeton, and champion tennis player Roger Federer among others.[2]

Pretty good advice, really. But interestingly (although not surprisingly if you’ve been following Aphorisms Unplugged), there was a time when being nice was something to be avoided. And, referring to someone as nice would be rude and insulting.

Not because being polite, kind and respectful was a bad idea, but because nice meant something completely different.

During the 14^th century, when the word nice was first used in English, it meant to be “silly, or foolish.” Which makes sense, since the term made its way to English by way of early French from the Latin nescius, meaning ignorant.

By the 16^th century, nice became associated with a sense of being finicky, or very particular. Around that time it was also used to describe someone with an extravagant, flashy, ostentatious dress code.

It wasn’t until the 19^th century that the word nice came to mean polite, kind, respectful – and respectable – as we understand it today.[3]

That’s quite the etymological journey. I’d wager Mom didn’t know about all the twists and turns the word had taken when she encouraged me to be nice. But regardless of how long it took for the term to mean polite, kind, and respectful, being nice to one another is something we should all strive to do.

Endnotes:

[1] “Nice quotes.” Brainy Quote.  https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/nice-quotes

[2] “It’s Nice to Be Important, but More Important To be Nice.” Quote Investigator. April 12, 2017. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/04/12/nice/

[3] “Nice.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nice.

“Nice.” Oxford English Dictionary. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/nice_adj?hide-all-quotations=true

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