As a lover of words, it pains me to witness the evaporation of the average American vocabulary to a level slightly above that of a precocious dolphin. Therefore, Stoned Column has as one of its missions to challenge readers to raise the bar of their word savvy. Words are a reflection of thoughts; the fewer words at one’s command, the more limited the thinking. The more limited the thinking, the closer one fits the paleo-stoner stereotype.
That said, there are some words whose existence should be obliterated. One of those words is the word nice. This may come as a surprise as nice is a nice word and anything that is nice is, well, uh, nice. The previous sentence illustrates my point. Nice is as devoid of meaning as a politician’s rhetoric, yet, it is somehow regarded as precious: Oh, what a nice day. Thank you Lisa, I had a nice time. You should really go out with him; he’s really nice. Your painting is very nice. You look nice.
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So, what’s the problem? There are other words whose contents are equally vapid. For example, the word thing functions as a convenient plugin for whenever one can’t produce the appropriate concrete word. as in there’s this thing that’s been bugging me. Or, that’s his thing; don’t take it seriously. Then there is the ubiquitous term f – – king, the most flexible and adaptive modifier in the English language as in it’s really f – – king cold, or you gotta be f – – king kidding. At least these words lack the pretension of the word nice. They are mere placeholders in the case of the former and universal modifiers in the case of the latter.
But nice is a fraud. It pretends to be flattering, but upon examination, it’s not. Personally, I would’nt go on a date with someone whose sole commendation is that she’s really nice. Shouldn’t everyone be nice? If a guy doesn’t kick me in the groin, does that make him nice? Nice is the low bar of human civility. Why would I want to associate with anyone who’s not nice? If I give someone a piece I’ve written and her response is I thought it was very nice, I wouldn’t be flattered. Men, if a lady friend asks you how she looks, strongly consider a word choice other than nice.
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The use of nice is a way to relieve oneself of the responsibility of saying what one means; Nice is code for I haven’t a clue what else I can say that won’t hurt your feelings. More candid synonyms for nice include such words as drab, lukewarm and boring. Just try going without using this term for a substantial period of time; you will be surprised how difficult it is. You will also discover how f – – king, nice things become.
