Nice and Silly
Which one are you? You might change your mind
I hadn’t gone down the rabbit hole with the word nice until my new friend J Bradley O suggested it to me. We’d been talking about the word crazy and how it can have a negative charge, especially in reference to mental health issues and trauma.
Of course, context and intention matter. While I agree that some words should just be retired, I think some words deserve to be rescued1 from those who would only do harm with them.
That’s nice, or is it?
Sugar and spice and all things foolish, ignorant, frivolous, and senseless? That is decidedly NOT what little girls are made of. Of course, with the subjugation and suppression of the feminine over thousands of years, it does make sense that they would make those qualities out to be "agreeable.”
Nice isn’t so nice, now, is it?
Etymonline says that it comes from the PIE root *ne- (not) and a stem of scire (to know). I wonder if this is where Siri gets her name, the all-knowing AI app. Incidentally, science comes from the same stem, although scientism as a dogma tends to discourage individual and empirical knowing.
Even before the meaning upgrade in the late thirteenth century to foolish and senseless, nice had meant not only careless, clumsy, weak, and needy, but stupid in the twelfth century. Later “upgrades” were fussy, dainty, fastidious, and finally “kind, and thoughtful.”
As a young child, I remember hearing “Children should be seen and not heard,” and it was undoubtedly meant more for the little girls than for the boys. And we’re talking early 1970’s here, although the great-grand-parentals were echoing centuries-old thoughts about societal roles.
I don’t want to be nice anymore.
Silly Goose
Have you heard of the goose that laid golden eggs? That would be one silly goose according to the etymology of silly.
From an Old English word gesælig, it meant "happy, fortuitous, and prosperous." The meanings crossed the Northern European continent, recorded from around the late twelfth century from the Proto-Germanic *sæligas. Within a hundred years, the word silly would land on the list of synonyms for nice and deteriorate in sense from there, becoming related with words like "harmless," "pitiable," and "weak,” to "feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish" three hundred years later.
I am certain that harmless in those days wasn’t meant as a compliment, but a reference to weakness, something to be disregarded.
Now you might think it simply means fun and funny, but dictionary definitions still echo denigrating definitions like “having or showing a lack of common sense or judgment; absurd and foolish.”
It might feel weird to embrace silly as a way to take your power back, but maybe we just let them think we are being foolish, while we take over the world. Bwahahaha!
Just don’t be nice about it!
♥ Runa
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Runa Heilung is an unapologetic mystic. Embracing the One Power that shapes all, she embraces all the ways the One Power speaks, including Tarot, Oracles, and Astrology.
She publishes Old Soul Alchemy, WordTree, and the soon-to-launch Wishing Wheel.
Think swastika, a Sanskrit word that means good fortune. The word and the symbol were co-opted almost 100 years ago for evil, so much so that if you use them today, people immediately label you as sympathizing with or practicing that horrible ideology, without bothering to find out more. Does the original word and symbol lose its value?
I wish I'd seen this sooner. What a fantastic (is that an OK word?) discussion of silly and nice. I'd say you were not nice about it at all! But I have a feeling it's catalyzed a good bit of silly, hopefully for many.