Word.ws English Dictionary

do the right thing

do the right thing verb: to do what is ethical or just.

Verb

do the right thing (third-person singular simple present does the right thing, present participle doing the right thing, simple past did the right thing, past participle done the right thing)

  1. (idiomatic, set phrase) To do what is ethical or just.
    • There was a lot of money in the wallet I found, but I did the right thing and handed it in.
    • In the dispute with the RMT about scanning tickets, Jackson said it was the right thing to do to pay conductors something to scan tickets. Northern pays two pence per scan, Jackson noted, adding that ticket scanning helps to cut fraud and increase staff visibility.2024 February 7, Philip Haigh, “Network News: TPE MD: consider impact of strikes on passengers”, in RAIL, number 1002, page 11

Synonyms of do the right thing

Forms of do the right thing

third-person singular presentdoes the right thing
present participledoing the right thing
pastdid the right thing
past participledone the right thing

Questions about do the right thing

What does do the right thing mean?
Do the right thing means to do what is ethical or just.
What part of speech is do the right thing?
Do the right thing is a verb.
What is the past tense of do the right thing?
The past tense of do the right thing is did the right thing.

Words near do the right thing in the dictionary

  1. do the nasties
  2. do the nasty
  3. do the needful
  4. do the power of good
  5. do the proper thing
  6. do the right thing
  7. do the rounds
  8. do the talking
  9. do the trick
  10. do the washing-up
  11. do the work

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: do the right thing (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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