Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The state or quality of being good.
- noun The beneficial or nutritious part.
- interjection Used to express mild surprise.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The state or quality of being good, in any sense; excellence; purity; virtue; grace; benevolence.
- noun In exclamatory use, a term of emphasis; “gracious”: as, my goodness! no; for goodness' sake, tell me what it is.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The quality of being good in any of its various senses; excellence; virtue; kindness; benevolence
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun uncountable The state or characteristic of being
good . - noun countable The good,
nutritional ,healthy part or content of something. - noun uncountable, euphemistic
God . - noun Christianity The
moral qualities which constitute Christian excellence; moralvirtue .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun that which is pleasing or valuable or useful
- noun moral excellence or admirableness
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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A second proof that the approbation of goodness is not the love of it is found in the fact, that _it is impossible not to approve of goodness_, while it is possible not to love it.
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We cannot reduce them to something they all have in common, or sensibly claim that there is a disjunctive property of goodness (such that goodness is ˜goodness in one of the various ways '.
Value Pluralism Mason, Elinor 2006
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Its creamy goodness is a hit with adults, children, and everybody in between.
Archive 2008-05-01 Laurie Constantino 2008
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Its creamy goodness is a hit with adults, children, and everybody in between.
Recipe: Pastitsio with Greens (Παστίτσιο με Χόρτα) Laurie Constantino 2008
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The downside of all this goodness is the price tag.
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Jennings prided himself upon what he called his goodness of heart and was always speaking of his humanity.
Clotelle: a Tale of the Southern States William Wells Brown
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Jennings prided himself upon what he called his goodness of heat, and was always speaking of his humanity.
Clotelle; or, the Colored Heroine, a tale of the Southern States; or, the President's Daughter William Wells Brown
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Why was it that the late Samuel Butler, with a conviction that increased with his experience of life, preached the gospel of Laodicea, urging people to be temperate in what they called goodness as in everything else?
Getting Married George Bernard Shaw 1903
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He prided himself upon what he called his goodness of heart, and was always speaking of his humanity.
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It must be because you supposed his goodness what you call goodness -- not something else -- that you could love him on testimony.
Wilfrid Cumbermede George MacDonald 1864
brobbins commented on the word goodness
actions, all living things
July 22, 2009