Notes on 'nice'

“Nice guys finish last,” quoth Leo Durocher.

I suspect he was right.

So is a ‘nice’ guy the same entity as a ‘good’ guy? I don’t really think so. Nelson Mandella is a good guy because of what he’s done with his life. Good guys ‘accomplish’ and they might quite possibly be nice as well. But not necessarily so.

Mother Teresa was, by most accounts, a pretty good person. But she wasn’t always especially nice. And Albert Schweitzer was purportedly arrogant, bombastic, self-righteous and a bit of al all-round shit, but that doesn’t detract from the good he did, hence rendering him a good man.

So, what is the exact meaning of the word ‘nice’? We use it with such regularity in so many context, maybe we should have a handle on it. Problem is, there are many meanings, and assorted nuances that render nice difficult to pin down. Here’s what my online dictionary has to say:

nice
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(n s)
adj. nic·er, nic·est
1. Pleasing and agreeable in nature: had a nice time.
2. Having a pleasant or attractive appearance: a nice dress; a nice face.
3. Exhibiting courtesy and politeness: a nice gesture.
4. Of good character and reputation; respectable.
5. Overdelicate or fastidious; fussy.
6. Showing or requiring great precision or sensitive discernment; subtle: a nice distinction; a nice sense of style.
7. Done with delicacy and skill: a nice bit of craft.
8. Used as an intensive with and: nice and warm.
9. Obsolete
a. Wanton; profligate: "For when mine hours/Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives/Of me for jests" Shakespeare.
b. Affectedly modest; coy: "Ere . . . /The nice Morn on th' Indian steep,/From her cabin'd loop-hole peep" John Milton.

Want to play a mental game with ‘nice’? Just repeat the world to yourself a number of times in a row, and it will sound weirder and weirder.

And, of course, since ‘nice’ is so essentially neutral in impact as in “Nice car, Fred.” Not wonderful, not exotic, not breathtaking, just plain old nice. In fact, sometimes ‘nice’ is so lacking in impact that it seems inappropriate:

“How was your date with Cameron Diaz, Bob?”
“Oh, it was nice.”
“Huh?”

“What’d you think of the Taj Mahal?”
“Nice.”

But, sometimes, with the appropriate emphasis the neutral can be turned into a superlative.

“Hoo-wah, she’s nice!” says the man when somebody excruciatingly fine has crossed his line of vision. He doesn’t just mean she is nice, he means he (men being pigs and all) would immediately chuck all he holds dear in life for a few minutes of carnality with this vision of pulchritude.

Nice is also well-suited to sarcasm, as in “Nice shot, Fred,” when Fred’s ball has sailed directly into a water hazard on the 14th hole.

So, back to Leo Durocher, do nice guys finish last?

Well, in baseball context, Babe Ruth was good, but also dissolute, and generally speaking far from being nice. Lou Gehrig, on the other hand, was both good and nice, but died early, so in a way he didn’t finish up so well. He did get to have a horrible wasting disease named after him, but that’s not the sort of fame most folks seek.

So, I guess niceness is no guarantee of success but, you know, it may be a source of some personal satisfaction in terms of our relationships with others to be regarded as ‘nice.’

On the other hand, there is no more depressing statement directed at a teenage boy by a pretty girl for whom he has declared his grand passion than: “Gee, Ralph, I think you are the nicest guy I know, but, I’m going to go and have sex with sleazy Herman who insults me, beats the crap out of me when he’s drunk, and is one of the most inconsiderate guys in town. He is sooooooo cool."