Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The state or quality of being good.
- n. The beneficial or nutritious part.
- interj. Used to express mild surprise.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The state or quality of being good, in any sense; excellence; purity; virtue; grace; benevolence.
- n. In exclamatory use, a term of emphasis; “gracious”: as, my goodness! no; for goodness' sake, tell me what it is.
Wiktionary
- n. uncountable The state or characteristic of being good.
- n. countable The good, nutritional, healthy part or content of something.
- n. uncountable, euphemistic God.
- n. Christianity The moral qualities which constitute Christian excellence; moral virtue.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The quality of being good in any of its various senses; excellence; virtue; kindness; benevolence.
WordNet 3.0
- n. that which is pleasing or valuable or useful
- n. moral excellence or admirableness
Etymologies
- good + -ness (Wiktionary)
Examples
“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.”
“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 '.”
“The downside of all this goodness is the price tag.”
“Its creamy goodness is a hit with adults, children, and everybody in between.”
“Jennings prided himself upon what he called his goodness of heart and was always speaking of his humanity.”
“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
“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?”
“He prided himself upon what he called his goodness of heart, and was always speaking of his humanity.”
“It must be because you supposed his goodness what you call goodness -- not something else -- that you could love him on testimony.”
“For if not such, then we have nothing in common with God, and what we call goodness is not of”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘goodness’.
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Guide to the Perplexed
Lexicon of terms set forth in Maimonides 'Guide to the Perplexed'. A fascinating exercise in theosophy and translation if one substitutes these definitions for a "revised" reading of the Old Testa...
eye, apprehend, associations, air, ruah : or ruhoth,..., affection, attribute, approach, accidents, ascending, articulated, back and 119 more...
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RELI - words with Biblical connotations
Words in the Bible evoking biblical stories or with special spiritual meaning. Proper names have been reduced to the minimum.
ark, judgement, holy, saint, baptism, spirit, love, eternal, altar, balsam, covenant, flood and 1115 more...
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POL - campaign tokenisms
Positive words and vague promises. THE words and expressions to use when you want to win over the masses or just don't know what to say.
"CAPITAL" stands for the administrative capital...deserve, deserve better, destiny, determination, determine, determine the wil..., dialogue, differentiation, difficult question, disappointments, diverse, diversity and 751 more...
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RELI - properties of the Christian God
eternity, holiness, omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, omnipresence, immortality, goodness, aseity, graciousness, immanence, immutability and 27 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
unfathomably, glice, cuh, fab, ciggaty, doll, thuggin, oxymoronic, pineapple, succubutt, griming, cheeky and 2995 more... -
my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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Poetrie: "For I Will Consider My Cat ...
An excerpt from Jubilate Agno, written by Christopher Smart between 1759 and 1763 during his confinement for "lunacy" at St. Luke's Hospital in Bethnal Green, London.
For I will...consider, cat, jeoffry, servant, living god, duly, worship, wreathing, elegant quickness, leaps up, musk, blessing and 145 more...
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Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 2244 more...
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Bible names
noah, almighty, cain, abel, father, mother, israel, king, sanctuary, spirit, psalm, blessing and 236 more...
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Diversified Obsessions
calendars, running, music, men, friends, motherhood, art, food, solitude, connection, drama, humor and 117 more...
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exclamations
expletive, blimey, okey dokey, whatchamacallit, oops, ooh, sheesh, lo and behold, phew, golly, bam, yikes and 13 more...
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aceacetwothree's Words
fudgy, brobdingnagian, stick-to-itiveness, goodness, chocolatey, teetotaciously, exflunctified, sequoia, melee, perspicacious, schwa, ampersand and 5 more...
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beautiful words.
the, known, universe, connection, touch, possibility, cataclysm, revolution, circumvolution, evolution, logic, winter and 71 more...
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ogrow's list
Words for my job
fresh, local, organic, grow, osage, dirt, water, csa, plants, seeds, sun, greenhouse and 19 more...
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Ozmopolitan Words
Words concerning anything Ozian...either from the original books or movie "The Wizard of Oz" or from the Broadway musical "Wicked."
galindafied, greenify, rejoicify, verdigris, swankified, emerald, liquification, ozian, oz, darlingest, momsie, popsical and 78 more...
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stories
edge
mysterious
unwilling
sacrifice
hummingbirds
stingray
suit
spine
delighted
random
sighedge, mysterious, sacrifice, spine, random, stingray, hummingbirds, unwilling, suit, sigh, delighted, childish and 34 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for goodness.
brobbins actions, all living things Jul 22, 2009