nice
‘foolish, stupid’
Lexical development traced from the Tamil root:
E. nyci, nys, nece, nyce < O.F. nice ‘careless, clumsy; weak; poor, needy; simple, stupid, silly, foolish’ < Lat. nescius ‘ignorant, unaware’ < ne- ‘not’ + scire ‘to know’ < O.F. science ‘knowledge, learning, application; corpus of human knowledge’ < Lat. scientia ‘knowledge, a knowing; expertness’ < sciens ‘intelligent, skilled’ < scire ‘to know’ < scindere ‘to cut, divide’ < nais < skei- < Tamil kappu