One of my primary school teachers had a real down on ‘nice’. Only lazy children used it as an all-purpose word; we were to make a more considered choice of adjectives to describe exactly what was nice about the experience we were describing in our essay.
There was one exception where the use of the word nice was allowed – when it was used in its original sense, of precise, exact or fine (as in nice distinction).
So I could not help but smile when, after yesterday’s railings about the over-nice insistence on maintaining the distinction between precision & accuracy,even in crossword clues, the Times cryptic crossword #25,237, which was providing diversion on my bus journey this lunchtime, contained the following:
Clue: Not very nice politician, in rage, is disrupting church
Answer: Imprecise
The OED’s entry on nice contains many shades of meaning, many of which have nothing to do with either accuracy or precision, but several examples of illustrative quotations added a further quota of wry amusement to my day:
7. That requires or involves great precision or accuracy. Now rare.
Example: American. Economic. Review (1911): It is by nice experiment and comparison that the precise point is determined.
8c. Precise in correspondence; exact, closely judged.
Example: C. S. Forester Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (1950): He revelled in the nice calculation of chances.
10a. That enters minutely into details; meticulous, attentive, sharp. Obsolete
12. a. Minutely or carefully accurate.
Example: W. Cather Professor's House (1925): He never acquired a nice laboratory technic. He would fail repeatedly in some perfectly sound experiment because of careless procedure.
12b. Of an instrument or apparatus: capable of showing minute differences; finely poised or adjusted. Obs.
Example: T. Percival Essays Medical. & Experimental (1776): A watery dew ...which being committed to a nice scale, may probably be found to be equal in gravity to a drop of rain.
