Kind vs. Nice

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there. This is Bonnie Benitez in San Diego.

Hi, Bonnie. Welcome to the program.

Hi, Bonnie. What’s up?

Well, I have a question about the origins of the words kind and nice and how you all see the difference in their history, their use, their definitions.

What brings us on? Where does this interest come from?

The interest comes from a conversation that I had with my coworkers a few weeks ago in which I was reflecting upon an interview I had seen with Oprah Winfrey, where her best friend Gail had told her that you’re not a nice person.

What?

That you’re kind and you’re generous and you’re all of these things, but you’re not nice.

And when I heard that, I actually thought of myself, because I’m like, people I don’t think would describe me as a nice person, but I do aspire to be kind and to be generous.

It’s not a word that I felt like I needed to have a connection with, and that’s what prompted a conversation about what really is the difference between the two words, because in some ways we use them interchangeably.

Yeah, Bonnie, we could talk about the origins, but I think that might be a mistake because we don’t need to be bound to the histories of these words.

And I think you really pitched us a topic that doesn’t involve etymology at all.

It’s more about, I don’t know.

Although the etymology of nice is pretty interesting.

Yeah, it is.

It’s really strange.

Yeah.

But we’re kind of talking about the difference between demeanor and behavior.

I mean, if I can bring it down to two other words, how you present yourself versus what you do.

I don’t know.

I think of nice as being overall the way that you appear to be, your visual and social qualities.

I think of kind as being what you do for others.

Your actions.

Your actions, how you interact with them, how you enable them to be good and do well for themselves.

I don’t know.

It’s hard to do.

What we say is, you know, we don’t say typically be kind.

We often say be nice as a behavior.

What I’m really curious about is what are the motivations, right?

So we started looking into this and having this conversation, and it seems like the motivation for niceness is, if that’s a word, external, that you’re being nice to please somebody else, to meet social conventions, to be seen in a certain way.

And that kindness has some sort of internal quality.

Like, you know, we don’t say nice-hearted, we say kind-hearted, right, in terms of the characteristic as opposed to a behavior that’s externally motivated.

Yeah, that’s really interesting.

I think what you’re saying maybe is that kindness is sort of a meatier word.

I feel like kind has to do with compassion and nice is more of an external cosmetic thing.

I mean, I think we do have to talk about the etymology of nice just because it’s really interesting.

It comes from Latin words that originally meant not to know.

And so there was this early sense of it being somebody who was stupid or ignorant.

And over time, yeah, it came to have the modern meaning it has today.

So for me, it seems a little bit more insubstantial than being kind.

But again, I just want to emphasize it’s not bound to its early histories at all.

I’m down to it. I just think it’s really interesting.

You know what we’re going to do, Bonnie?

I know that we have a lot of thoughtful listeners, including many people in theology and philosophy who listen to the show, and I’m sure they’ll all have comments from their own discipline about kindness versus niceness.

And we welcome those to 877-929-9673, or email them to words@waywordradio.org.

Bonnie, I want to thank you for your call.

This is a really interesting question.

Thank you so much. And listen, be kind.

Will do. We do our best.

All right.

All right.

Me too.

Bye-bye.

Take care, Bonnie.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.