Slang dictionary
nice guy
[nahys gahy]
What does nice guy mean?
He’s a nice guy, but …
In popular dating culture, a nice guy is a pejorative term for an insecure man who expects his kindness to be rewarded with sex.
Where does nice guy come from?
We’ve been describing a man who is a kind, thoughtful person as a nice guy since at least the early 1900s, as far as the written record is concerned. Nice fellow predates it, evidenced in the early 1800s.
His reputation, though, hasn’t aged well. Nice guy has become a stand-in for a loser, particularly in dating contexts.
He shows up in the saying nice guys finish last—agreeable people who get overpowered by their more assertive counterparts—which is credited to Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher in 1946. He famously dissed the New York Giants that season when he said of their near-bottom standing: “The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place.” Reporting eventually rendered the quote into nice guys finish last.
Nice guy also makes an appearance in no more Mr. Nice Guy, said when someone is throwing down—and implying nice guys are soft and weak. Alice Cooper rocked the saying in his 1973 track “No More Mr. Nice Guy.” A reporter memorably asked it of Richard Nixon about the Vietnam War in 1977. No more Mr. Nice Guy is also associated with an old joke about Hitler.
When nice guy makes the jump from sports, politics, and rock ‘n’ roll to romance isn’t exactly clear, but the expressions nice guys finish last and no more Mr. Nice Guy certainly contributed to the trope of the nice guy—a perfectly harmless dude who is just, well, kind of uninteresting and unappealing.
WATCH: What's So Wrong With "Nice"?
Since at least the late 1980s, as evidenced in an early internet-message group, romantically unsuccessful men have self-identified as the nice guy, always losing out to the bad boy. In the 1990s and early 2000s, sociologists were even using nice guy, in one form or another, as a concept when studying dating behavior and psychology. Their findings show that nice guys do indeed finish last—in some cases.
Not all men have taken criticisms of the contemporary nice guy so self-seriously, though. Hundreds of thousands belong to the subreddit r/niceguys, intended to make fun of nice guys who fail to take responsibility for their own shortcomings.
Examples of nice guy
Who uses nice guy?
In everyday speech and writing, plenty of people describe genuinely good dudes as nice guys. This is true, too, of desired romantic partners:
Just be very mindful that the nice guy is also a shorthand for a type of hypocritical, sexually entitled man, often associated with snapping into sexism or misogyny when his performed niceness isn’t met with romantic or sexual favors.
Expect nice guy to be very frequently used in the expression nice guys finish last and no more Mr. Nice Guy. These can refer to dating, but their senses are by no means restricted to that context.
That’s it, No More Mr. Nice Guy, Jan, We been patient enough, where is our renewal. It’s been over 2 weeks without a single beep from you guys over at @nbc. What’s the hold up. You think by staying quiet we will just go away into the sunset. Think again.#Timeless #RenewTimeless pic.twitter.com/yWYuWah60K
— IdaG (@iday2j) May 29, 2018
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of nice guy like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of nice guy that will help our users expand their word mastery.