Nice is probably one of the most over-used British English words in my vocabulary and it's one that frequently generates 'huh' noises from Americans looking at me with their heads tilted sideways.
"Nice one!" I say to a colleague who's managed to get two twix (twixes? twixi?) for the price of one from the office vending machine.
"Nice," I remark sarcastically to myself while wiping mouse droppings from our oven top for the 50th time this week.
"Spring is really nice in England," I tell anyone who'll listen.
"That would look nice on you," I tell a friend when we go shopping.
Or, "They have the nicest cupcakes," I say, of Sunshine Bakery.
I think the closest American English word to the most common usage of 'nice' is 'cute, which is a word I can't quite bring myself to say - because cute doesn't sound nice to me.
Because I don't like the way 'cute' sounds, I don't associate it with 'nice' things. I'm an oversensitive freak, I'll readily admit, but I'm guessing I can't be the only one. Anyone else?
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6 comments:
I was told in primary school that the word 'nice' was a tired word (or a lazy word, I can't remember exactly)...and I've tried not to use it in writing since. But in speech, that's a different matter!
Maybe you could take to using the Gavin & Stacey inspired "tidy!" ?
ie "Like the dreess, Stace. Tidy."
or
"You got two Twixes out of the machine? Tidy."
etc etc
I think I was told exactly the same thing at school - that it's lazy to describe something as 'nice'. I suspect that prohibition of the word is what made me so fond of it.
Will see how it goes with 'tidy'...
My friends teased me when I came back to NY after living in the UK for a while because I started referring to food as nice, as in, "They make nice sandwiches there." Food is never nice in America.
My 'nice' is 'lovely'. It's the one British word my daughter's picked up so I must use it all the time....
I agree with you on 'cute' though, although in some states 'neat' is used in the same way.
I think cute sounds patronising (as in "cute chick"). "Nice" is so multi-purpose, but perhaps it's rather meaningless because of that.
Never thought of using the word nice as as British. I say it all the time in the same ways you do. Of course, being American I say cute often too.
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