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
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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Its creamy goodness is a hit with adults, children, and everybody in between.
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Its creamy goodness is a hit with adults, children, and everybody in between.
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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.
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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.
brobbins commented on the word goodness
actions, all living things
July 22, 2009