Word.ws English Dictionary

do well by doing good

do well by doing good verb: to achieve social acceptance or financial success as a result of behaving in a benevolent or charitable manner.

Verb

do well by doing good (third-person singular simple present does well by doing good, present participle doing well by doing good, simple past did well by doing good, past participle done well by doing good)

  1. (idiomatic) To achieve social acceptance or financial success as a result of behaving in a benevolent or charitable manner.
    • Ev'ry evening you will find him / Around our neighborhood / It's the old dope peddler / Doing well by doing good1954, Tom Lehrer, “The Old Dope Peddler”, in Songs by Tom Lehrer (LP record), Lehrer Records, Track 2
    • The sanctioning doctrine of Good Works has been at hand every since Benjamin Franklin canonized the Arminian Heresy. So Cash McCall, like his patron saint, does well by doing good.1960, Albert D. Van Nostrand, The Denatured Novel, volume 3, Bobbs-Merrill, page 170

Forms of do well by doing good

third-person singular presentdoes well by doing good
present participledoing well by doing good
pastdid well by doing good
past participledone well by doing good

Origin of do well by doing good

The origin is unknown; in use since the mid-20th century. Although the phrase is sometimes attributed to Benjamin Franklin, the earliest documented usage is from Tom Lehrer's 1953 novelty song "The Old Dope Peddler."

Questions about do well by doing good

What does do well by doing good mean?
Do well by doing good means to achieve social acceptance or financial success as a result of behaving in a benevolent or charitable manner.
What part of speech is do well by doing good?
Do well by doing good is a verb.
What is the past tense of do well by doing good?
The past tense of do well by doing good is did well by doing good.

Words near do well by doing good in the dictionary

  1. do unto others as you would have them do unto you
  2. do up
  3. do violence to
  4. do want
  5. do well
  6. do well by doing good
  7. do well for oneself
  8. do what
  9. do what I say, not what I do
  10. do what it says on the tin
  11. do what one does

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: do well by doing good (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-do well by doing good.ogg.

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