Exhibit展品
nice
/naɪs/
How did ignorance become a compliment?无知怎样变成了一句夸奖？
Today此刻
Pleasant, agreeable, kind, often mildly so.愉快、可亲、和善，常常是轻度的。
Borrowed whole整词借入
How it arrived它如何到来
English borrowed the whole French word. The Latin cut, ne- plus scire, belongs to nescius, before the borrowing. You cannot build new English words by clipping nice.英语借入的是整个法语词。拉丁语的切分 ne- 加 scire 属于 nescius，在借入之前。不能靠裁开 nice 来造新的英语词。
Travel through time穿过时间
Latin拉丁语
nescius
ignorant, not knowing无知，不知道
Old French古法语
nice
foolish, simple愚蠢，简单
Middle English中古英语
nice
foolish, then fussy and precise愚蠢，后来挑剔而精确
Several of these senses overlap in the record.其中几种意思在记录里彼此重叠。
English英语
nice
pleasant, agreeable愉快，可亲
How the meaning moved意义如何移动
01 · Latin01 · 拉丁语
unknowing不知道
02 · Old French and Middle English02 · 古法语与中古英语
foolish愚蠢
03 · early modern English03 · 近代早期英语
fussy, precise挑剔，精确
04 · later English04 · 较晚的英语
pleasant愉快
Story故事
The long road out of not knowing离开“不知道”的长路
Latin nescius means not knowing: ne- plus scire, to know. Old French nice means foolish, simple. English takes that insult and then refuses to sit still. Over several centuries nice is foolish, wanton, coy, fastidious, precise, and at last pleasant.
The steps overlapped. A speaker in one decade could still hear the old slight while a neighbor was already using the word as praise. No academy voted the new sense in. The record is a crowd of uses, and the dictionaries are honest about the crowd.
What people now hear is the faintest compliment in the language. The etymology is the opposite of faint. Nice begins as a word for someone who does not know.
拉丁语 nescius 是不知道：ne- 加 scire（知道）。古法语 nice 是愚蠢、简单。英语接过这句侮辱，然后不肯停住。几个世纪里，nice 是愚蠢的、放荡的、忸怩的、挑剔的、精确的，最后才是愉快的。
这些步骤彼此重叠。十年里，一个人仍听得见旧的轻慢，邻居已经把这个词用作夸奖。没有学院投票通过新的意思。记录是一群用法，词典对这群用法是诚实的。
人们现在听见的是语言里最轻的一句夸奖。词源正好相反，一点也不轻。nice 从一个表示“不知道”的词开始。
Keep wandering继续漫游
Research notes研究笔记
Confidence · Mixed把握 · 有保留
The outline is well supported, and at least one step is easy to oversimplify.轮廓有充分依据，其中至少一步容易被说得太满。
The sense history is long, and several meanings overlapped. The steps here are a path through the record, not a series of official redefinitions.意思的历史很长，几种意义曾经重叠。这里的步骤是穿过记录的一条路，不是一串官方的重新定义。
Sources出处
An outline for the visitor, not a critical edition.给访客的纲要，不是校勘本。