I know it’s kind of pretentious to start a conversation with me recurring to Shakespeare, but a little pretension never killed anyone, and well, Shakespeare is the bard. Besides, I have a point. Do you remember his famous play, King Lear? It tells the story of a powerful old king who wants to spend the rest of his life accompanied by his three daughters. To do so, he decides to leave the throne and divide his kingdom in three. To do so, he summons his children and asks them how much they love him and, according to the answers, he plans to give them power.
His elder daughters, two ambitious women married to two greedy men, understand the intentions of their father and try to win the most with praises, so they receive a good part of the land and their father’s wealth. The king now addresses his youngest daughter, Cordelia, the one who has proved to really love him, and asks her what can she tell him to gain her inheritance. She answers with one single word, “Nothing.” Perplexed, Lear replies with one of the most iconic phrases in Shakespeare’s repertoire: “Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.” Cordelia replies: “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth.” Lear, not understanding that his daughter meant that there are no words to express the love she has for him, banishes her from the kingdom. Long story short, the other daughters end up showing their true colors and neglect their father once they have the power, and the poor old man ends up losing his mind and wandering through the forest accompanied by his jester, who doesn’t hesitate to tell him what a fool he was.
The point of being pretentious and mentioning the play is to prove something: we often underestimate the power of language. A single word can change so many things when the intention is not well established. On the other hand, it can also hold a huge meaning and still be overused, without people knowing its scope. That’s the case of the word we’re referring to in the title and the one that could actually backfire your attempts to find love. And that word is … (drum roll) … nice. Before stating why we shouldn’t really use that apparently harmless adjective that often, or actually why we should avoid it, think about how many times in a day you use it. I mean, I don’t want specific numbers, but think of how frequent that word comes from your mouth. I bet it’s a lot.
The thing with nice is that it’s become one of the most common terms in our everyday language, and, in the same way we use expressions like literally, it only shows our lack of vocabulary. Now, I don’t mean to sound showy (and I swear that was not the intention of bringing up Shakespeare), but it’s really important to know how to express with the right words to convey what we really want to say. And that’s the issue with nice.
This word is often used to convey pleasantness and kindness, but we use it literally (and this time I mean it) to qualify anything: that guy was nice, I had a nice trip, those clothes look nice on you, wouldn’t it be nice if we had more vacations? In all these cases we could easily change the word for another adjective to be more precise. That’s why the word is said to be bland and empty. It doesn’t really contain anything nor does it convey real qualifications. Moreover, the word has a whole history behind that actually has nothing to do with being nice as we understand it.
Coming from the Latin word nescius and the Old French nice, it was a term from the thirteenth century to describe an ignorant, clumsy, weak, or stupid person. Its evolution during the centuries went through many meanings, from fastidious and senseless, to dainty and delicate in the eighteenth century, and finally to kind and thoughtful in the nineteenth century. But if you think about it, it’s not that all of a sudden the word stopped being used in a negative way. To me it has all to do with political correctness (yes, it has existed for so long), and it was just a way to avoid being directly offensive. But if you ask me, it has sort of the same connotations as before.
Now, you might be wondering why does using this word lower your expectations of finding love? I don’t mean to say that the reason why you haven’t found someone lies in your frequent use of the word nice. What I mean is that most of the times we don’t pay too much attention to the words we use and what they really mean. Let’s make it clearer. In her article for the Suitcase Entrepreneur, Natalie Sisson gives a very concise example. One of her friends hooks up with a woman. They go out and end up having sex. They both really liked each other. So the next day, the woman asks him what he thought about the encounter, and he only replied “nothing.”
No, I’m just kidding, he actually told her that it was really nice. To that answer, the woman obviously felt angry and left. No matter how much this person assures that he used the right intonation and stretched the word really, at the end of the day, it was like saying that the experience was bland and dull. Think about the meanings the word has conveyed historically. Somehow the way we use it nowadays is just an evolution stained with condescendence. No wonder the woman flipped out!
The point here is that we get used to mentioning some words just because they’re popular or, as Sisson says, because we’re lazy and want to simplify everything. But at the end of the day we should take advantage of what we have within our reach, and language is precisely that. You might think it’s stupid (or nice in the thirteenth-century connotation) but the way you speak can say so many things about yourself. Do you want to give a good impression with a love interest, at college, or in a job interview? Check what your words are conveying.
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