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Nice (nēs)
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A city of southeast France on the Mediterranean Sea northeast of Cannes. Controlled by various royal houses after the 1200s, the city was finally ceded to France in 1860. It is the leading resort city of the French Riviera.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 
nice (nīs)
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adj. nic·er, nic·est
1. Pleasing and agreeable in nature: had a nice time; a nice person.
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).

[Middle English, foolish, from Old French, from Latin nescius, ignorant, from nescīre, to be ignorant; see NESCIENCE.]

nicely adv.
niceness n.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 
Nice (nīs), Margaret Morse 1883-1974.
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American ornithologist best known for her careful observations of bird behavior, described in her book Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow (1937).

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.