The etymology of 'nice' and 'shit'
Jack mentions randomly in a conversation some story Alexf had told him about the words 'nice' and 'shit' having a common root. My first response was "what, in proto-indo-european?"
This is interesting, so I investigate. It's easy to find a discussion on the word 'shit':
From Old English "schite" (and similar spellings), originally as a verb meaning to defecate. It's been traced as far back as the proto-Indo-European root "skei-," to cut, split, also responsible for "science," "omniscient," "conscience," and lots of other words. Defecation is a kind of separation: the material passed leaves one's body..-- http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/bulletin_board/20/messages/560.html
Next for 'nice':
"Nice" has had an interesting history. Deriving from the Latin nescius, "ignorant" (from nescire, "not to know"), it's meaning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries commonly was "foolish" or "wanton." To refer to someone as a "nice person" was no compliment in Chaucer's day.-- http://www.mrcranky.com/movies/mrniceguy/54/4.html
(Much as I hate to trust linguistic information from someone who confuses 'its' and "it's", the same information is repeated all over the place.)
The 'scire' rings a bell. I remember learning in French that the origin of the word 'savoir' is 'sapere' ("to be wise" in Latin), but during the late middle ages, some writers believed that it came from 'scire' ("to know", as above), and spelled it 'scavoir'.
The book we used in class to talk about specific linguistic transformations from Latin uses the terms "sonorisation", "spirantisation", and "renforcement en labiodentale" to describe the transformation from p to b to [beta] to v, or from "occlusif sourd labial" to "constrictif sonore labial". Cool words.
I run across a discussion of the word 'scissors':
Scissors are simply "cutters". English borrowed the word as sisoures from Old French cisoires. French took its word from Late Latin cisoria, the plural of cisorium "cutter". The source of the noun was Latin caedere "to strike, beat, slay" which, when used in compounds with prepositions, had the meaning "cut" (abscidere, concidere). Caesar comes from caedere, as well, referring to the legend that an ancestor of the Caesars was born by what we today call caesarian section.-- http://www.takeourword.com/TOW172/page2.htmlToday's spelling of scissors arose in the 16th century by confusion with Latin scissor "tailor", which was formed from scindere "to cut, split". This goes back to the Indo-European root *skei- "to cut, split" which gave us hypothetical Old English *scitan "to defecate", source of sh*t.
And for scire connection, looking up 'science' at dictionary.com does the trick:
Latin scientia, from scins, scient- present participle of scre, to know. See skei- in Indo-European Roots
Comments
This is quite NICE sweetheart!
Posted by: holly | March 18, 2007 11:16 AM
The following passage appears in Peter Trudgill's "The Meanings of Words Should Not be Allowed to Vary or Change", published in Language Myths (explaining the contrary title), which he also co-edited with Laurie Bauer.
"Nice comes originally from two ancient Indo-European roots, *skei meaning 'cut', which came down into Latin as the verb scire 'to know', probably via a meaning such as 'be able to distinguish one thing from another', and *ne meaning 'not'. The combination of the two forms gave the Latin verb nescire which meant 'to be ignorant of'. This led to the development of the adjective nescius 'ignorant', which came down into Old French as nice meaning 'silly'. It was then borrowed from French into medieval English with the meaning 'foolish, shy' and, over the centuries, has gradually changed its meaning to 'modest', then 'delicate', 'considerate', 'pleasant' and finally 'agreeable' – a very long way in 6,000 years from its original meaning." He then continues his point that etymology doesn't necessarily provide the meaning of a word. "No one in their right mind, though, would argue that the 'real' meaning of nice is, or ought to be, 'not cutting'."
It's a good book if you're looking for non-technical writing on linguistics. All the chapters are named for the myths the various authors seek to dispel. I got it a few years prior to studying linguistics (a little) in college.
Oxford American has some interesting facts to add:
ORIGIN Middle English (in the sense [stupid] ): from Old French, from Latin nescius 'ignorant,' from nescire 'not know.' Other early senses included [coy, reserved,] giving rise to [fastidious, scrupulous] : this led both to the sense [fine, subtle] (regarded by some as the "correct" sense), and to the main current senses.
USAGE Nice originally had a number of meanings, including 'fine, subtle, discriminating' (: they are not very nice in regard to the company they keep); 'refined in taste, hard to please, fastidious' ( | for company so nice, the finest caterers would be engaged; and 'precise, strict' ( | she has a nice sense of decorum). The popular overuse of nice to mean 'pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory' has rendered the word trite: | we had a very nice time; | this is a nice room; | he's a nice boy.
I didn't know "shit" had the same root. That's funny. And the other words too. I'm sure there are more...etymology is so metaphorical.
Posted by: AAEngelman | March 27, 2008 09:25 PM