nicely

From nice +‎ -ly.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈnʌɪsli/

nicely (comparative nicelier or more nicely, superlative niceliest or most nicely)

1. (obsolete) Fastidiously; carefully. [16th-18th c.]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.xii:

     He lookt askew with his mistrustfull eyes, / And nicely trode, as thornes lay in his way, / Or that the flore to shrinke he did auyse [...].

2. Precisely; with fine discernment or judgement. [from 17th c.]
   • 1926, Ford Madox Ford, A Man Could Stand Up—, Penguin 2012 (Parade's End), p. 580:

     An army – especially in peace time – is a very complex and nicely adjusted affair […].

   • 2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin 2012, p. 59:

     Henry's carefully calibrated public appearances would present him as the wellspring of honour, justice and power, the unknowable, all-seeing sovereign who, as the Milanese ambassador Soncino nicely observed, appeared in public ‘like one at the top of a tower looking on at what is passing in the plain’.

3. Pleasantly; satisfactorily. [from 18th c.]

• lycine