Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. The state or quality of being good.
- n. The beneficial or nutritious part.
- interj. Used to express mild surprise.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. The state or characteristic of being good.
- n. The good, nutritional, healthy part or content of something.
- n. God.
- n. The moral qualities which constitute Christian excellence; moral virtue.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. The quality of being good in any of its various senses; excellence; virtue; kindness; benevolence
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The state or quality of being good, in any sense; excellence; purity; virtue; grace; benevolence.
- n.
- n. In exclamatory use, a term of emphasis; “gracious”: as, my goodness! no; for goodness' sake, tell me what it is.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. that which is pleasing or valuable or useful
- n. moral excellence or admirableness
Etymologies
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 '.
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The downside of all this goodness is the price tag.
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Its creamy goodness is a hit with adults, children, and everybody in between.
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Jennings prided himself upon what he called his goodness of heart and was always speaking of his humanity.
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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
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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?
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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.
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For if not such, then we have nothing in common with God, and what we call goodness is not of
brobbins commented on the word goodness
actions, all living things
July 22, 2009