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Goody-goody   Listen
adjective
Goody-goody  adj.  Mawkishly or weakly good; exhibiting goodness with silliness. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Goody-goody" Quotes from Famous Books



... appears the owner of the Chateau de Chamont is an old lady of Napoleon's time? Oh, SHE was a merry one! At least, so Joseph told me, and he heard it from the servants at the bishop's palace. There's no one like it nowadays, and for the matter of that, she's become goody-goody." ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... the other laconically. 'Knows better. Most of 'em as comes down 'ere stuffs all they have to say as full of goody-goody as an egg's full of meat. If he wur that sort you wouldn't catch me here. Never heard him say anything in the "dear brethren" sort of style, and I've been 'ere most o' these evenings ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... writer evidently forgets that Shahrazad is telling the story to the king, as Boccaccio (ii. 7) forgets that Pamfilo is speaking. Such inconsequences are common in Eastern story-books and a goody-goody sentiment is always heartily received as ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... with the first was George Meyer, her good friend from childhood. He had many, many strings to help and only a few to hinder. And there was Edward Mead. He was such a goody-goody at school that she didn't care much for him. Why, he wouldn't whisper ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston

... is not with the world but with the silly writers of goody-goody stories, who have so emasculated and effeminated the boy who works hard and holds his head high that it is now well-nigh impossible to hear of such an one in real life without instantly setting him down as an intolerable prig. These writers have ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie

... one up too. Up to that time I had played the boy buccaneer with no more conscience than a fox in a poultry farm. But now I began to have scruples, to feel obligations, to find that veracity and honor were no longer goody-goody expressions in the mouths of grown up people, but compelling ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... become a good man by being a good boy—not a goody-goody boy, but just a plain good boy. "Good," in the largest sense, should include whatever is fine, straightforward, clean, brave, and manly. The best boys I know—the best men I know—are good at their studies or their business, ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... I wish I had your temper and impulses, Lucia, that I might flash into anger now and then and do something rash—something that I should be sorry for later on, but which in my secret heart I should be glad I had done. Oh, I get so tired of being just a plain, goody-goody little woman who will always do the right thing in the most uninteresting way; a woman about whom there is no delightful uncertainty; a woman on whom you can always reckon just as you would on the figure 4 or 6 or any other number in mathematics. I am ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... makes the horror of such existence; all of which might have been imparted without any violation of the decorum proper to such a book, and which, therefore, should not have been withheld. The book, too, is much too goody-goody. There is too much preaching throughout it, and in certain parts a suddenness in the kneeling down to pray that is quite startling. This stupid sort of goodness helps much to defeat the purpose of the work. Even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... happiest ones. I fully agree with Professor Freud in his statement "that sexual abstinence does not help to build up energetic, independent men of action, original thinkers, bold advocates of freedom and reform, but rather goody-goody weaklings." And still more to the purpose is the statement of Professor Michels, ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... of blood kinships enjoyed by a native English word take the adjective good. We can easily call to mind other members of its family: goodly, goodish, goody-goody, good-hearted, good-natured, good- humored, good-tempered, goods, goodness, goodliness, gospel (good story), goodby, goodwill, goodman, goodwife, good-for-nothing, good den (good evening), the Good Book. The connection ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... which is wrong, and not the mere words or faces." He ran the risk of being laughed at, but they didn't laugh, for something in his way of talking to them, even when verging on what they called "goody-goody," inspired them ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... Only a child's goody-goody tale? Possibly. But for my part I know no better philosophy and, at least as Nodier told ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... second appearance, yet the world of story-book literature, even though its creators were sometimes either careless or ignorant of facts, now also emphasized the value of general knowledge, which it endeavored to pour in increasing quantity into the nursery. Miss More had started the stream of goody-goody books, while Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Barbauld, and Thomas Day were the originators of the deluge of conversational bores, babies, boys, and teachers that threatened to flood the family book-shelves of America when the American writers for children ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... looking after the slim figure, "I'm always suspicious of those goody-goody creatures. Mark my words, girls: Mary Louise will fall from her pedestal some day. She isn't a bit better than the rest of us, in spite of her angel baby ways, and I wouldn't be surprised if she turned out to be ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... which are respected everywhere by all wholesome minds, and especially by boys, a leader among his school-fellows. We know further that he was honest and true, and a lad of unusual promise, not because of the goody-goody anecdotes of the myth-makers, but because he was liked and trusted by such men as his brother Lawrence and ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... value. He had given her nothing, hardly even a thought (except the thought that he was an ass), since last May. Thinking of her now, he had another of those pangs of shame which had stabbed him so at first, but to which of late he had grown callous. The shame of having been the one—after all his goody-goody talk!—to pull her off the track; still, she was straight again now. He was quite sure of that. "You can tell when they're straight," he thought, heavily. Perhaps, in the winter, he would send her some flowers. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... labors under the disadvantage of having to counteract the errors and absurdities which the Reverend Mason L. Weems made current in the Life he published the year after Washington died. No one, not even Washington himself, could live down the reputation of a goody-goody prig with which the officious Scotch divine smothered him. The cherry-tree story has had few rivals in publicity and has probably done more than anything else to implant an instinctive contempt of its hero in the hearts of four generations of readers. "Why couldn't George ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... squatting cross-legged on her bed, while Loveday's neat hands arranged her possessions. "If I were a sedate, goody-goody, 'old-beyond-her-years', staid sort of a person, you'd never spoil me as you do. I'll try to practise it if you like, though. Anything to please you! ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... were gone, the colorless face lighted up from within. "I understand now." She walked round the table and leaned over the dishes toward him and laughed. "Alfred," she tittered, "you certainly are the most goody-goody old poke of a stick that ever wore man's clothes, and you are blind, blind as a day-old kitten. You know men, all grades and styles of 'em, but you are a born fool when it comes to women. When that girl marries Jasper Long—I say, when Dixie Hart takes him, let me know, ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... clothes and did the least work. Prue was sent off to boarding-school in Chicago, though she had never been able to keep up with her classes in Carthage; while Ollie—who took first prizes till even the goody-goody boys hated her—stayed at home. She had dreamed of being a teacher in the High, but she never mentioned it, and she studied bookkeeping and stenography in the business college so that she could help ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes



Words linked to "Goody-goody" :   sycophant, lackey, toady, ass-kisser, crawler, good



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