Erik Brady: Reader’s Digest meant well, but there are better words to describe Buffalo than ‘nice’

Nicest place in America, according to Reader’s Digest.

Which is, ya know … nice.

The magazine means it as a high compliment — and we should, of course, take it in that spirit. The designation cites Buffalo’s resilience in the face of the Christmas blizzard and other calamities, while rightly recognizing our City of Good Neighbors vibe.

But, please, couldn’t the good folks at Reader’s Digest have come up with more descriptive words? Maybe most resilient. Most neighborly. Or most anything other than … nice.

Look, it’s not nice to nitpick. I get that. But that word is so general. So nonspecific. So bland. And we use it so much that its meaning has by now been flattened into something approaching nonmeaning.

Jane Austen understood. Here is a passage from her 1803 novel, “Northanger Abbey”:

“ ‘I am sure,’ cried Catherine, ‘I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should I not call it so?’ ‘Very true,’ said Henry, ‘and this is a nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk; and you two are very nice ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does everything.’ ”

And it has meant so many things. “Nice” comes from the Latin word nescius, which means “ignorant” or “unaware.” Later, according to the etymology website etymonline.com, its meaning morphed from “careless” or “clumsy” in the 12th century to “timid” or “faint-hearted” in the 13th; from “foolish” or “frivolous” in the late 13th century to “dainty” or “delicate” in the 14th; and from “fussy” or “fastidious” in the late 14th century to “precise” or “careful” in the 16th.

That last meaning lives on today. One of the many secondary meanings of the adjective “nice,” according to dictionary.com, is showing great “precision” or “delicacy.” The primary meaning – the one Reader’s Digest means – is, of course, “pleasing” or “agreeable” or…