Does "good" weigh a little bit more than "nice"?
I came across the descriptions of badges in this Q&A site, and was curious about which word weighs more, "good" or "nice"?
Here are the two descriptions that interested me:
"Good Answer": Question score of 25 or more.
"Nice Answer": Question score of 10 or more.
Seems like "good" weighs more than "nice", will that always be the case? "a good person" will be a little better than "a nice person"?
Solution 1:
Nice in nice answer means (as reported from the NOAD) "pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory."
Good in good answer could mean
- pleasing and welcome
- obedient to rules or conventions
- having the required qualities
- giving pleasure; enjoyable or satisfying
There is a partial overlap between the meaning of nice and good, but (for example) nice is not used when referring to something that follow some rules or convention, or to something that have the required qualities.
Solution 2:
I think it depends on the context. In those examples, there's not much to go on. I agree that it's not very clear which is supposed to be better.
I personally would think that IF one weighs more than the other (which I don't think there's a clear cut answer for), "nice" would generally be on top slightly.
Example of nice sounding "better" than good:
- That's a nice car.
- That's a good car.
"Nice" gives me the impression that the car is exceptional, while "good" gives the impression that the car is simply solid or reliable, or maybe just acceptable.
However, sometimes nice means "quaint" while good means "excellent".
- That was a good movie.
- That was a nice movie.
To me, "good" now has more weight — it's almost the exact opposite. "Good" means the movie was very enjoyable (would watch again), while "nice" means it was only fairly enjoyable (might not watch again).
This is of course just my personal interpretation.
Conclusion: Good question. Of course, the meaning is quite different when we talk about people (Good may mean "does good deeds", while nice may mean "pleasant"). You can be evil and nice at the same time. However, I think in the context you put it the meaning is quite ambiguous. "Good Answer" and "Great Answer" would be much clearer.
Solution 3:
I think there's some completely unjustified mixing of contexts going on here. This isn't a general debate on what these words mean; it's about a ranking order for them in one specific context.
It just so happens that in the EL&U 'scoring' hierarchy, the word good is used for a higher grade than nice. And great is even better than good.
Well, actually, I don't think it does exactly just so happen. If I had to rank those three words for EL&U scoring, I would definitely put them in ascending order nice -> good -> great. And I bet most people would choose that order, so it's not just me.
And if they had cute in the hierarchy, I'd put that lowest.