I distinctively remember when I was a kid, and I was trying to tell my dad that something smelt nice, all I could muster out of my limited vocabulary was "nice smell". But if I were to say it stunk, I had a lot of words for it. Smelly, yucky, gross. And they came to mind fast enough. Dad later taught me the opposite of smelly was fragrant. In my young mind, I thought "What a difficult word that was!"
And then I realised that opposite of good is bad, and the opposite of naughty is... hm. good? Come primary five, my teacher taught us the word amiable. I had absolutely no idea what it meant, but she said it meant something good. And then there were more words like amicable, affable, benign, cordial that popped up sometime in my life or other, all of which, essentially meant nice. Kind, as well.
However, the opposites of kind and nice were already etched earlier in my mind. Really because, these words were shorter, catchier and simply easier to remember; mean, stingy, evil, selfish, ugly, hehe.. bad!
And truth be told, saying "I don't like you" was always easier than "I like you". You get to add more expression for the former too.
Therefore, after 23 years of speaking English, I give the grand conclusion that *pause* the English language *pause* prefers *pause* the lousier side of man *ta-dah!*.
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