Word.ws English Dictionary

goldilocks

/ˈɡəʊldilɒks//ˈɡəʊldilɒks/

goldilocks noun: a person with golden hair, especially a girl with long hair.

Noun

goldilocks (plural goldilocks)

  1. A person with golden hair, especially a girl with long hair.
  2. A goldilocks aster (Aster linosyris).

Proper noun capitalized: Goldilocks

Goldilocks

  1. A golden-haired young girl, featuring as the protagonist of a traditional fairy tale, who inquisitively enters the house of three bears and tries their three bowls of porridge, three chairs, and three beds, in each case finding only one that suits her.
    • Tennis players are the Goldilocks characters of sports.
      The balls are too big, or too small. The courts are too fast, or too slow. It’s too cold, or too hot, or too sticky, or too sunny.2022 September 6, Matthew Futterman, “The Great U.S. Open Ball Debate of 2022”, in The New York Times
  2. (attributive, figuratively) A happy medium or optimal point between two extremes.
    • Once the appropriate levels are stabilized at a Goldilocks level, not too detailed nor too summarized, then the connection of the ABC/M data to business problems, their analysis, and ultimate solutions can follow.2002, Gary Cokins, Activity-Based Cost Management: An Executive's Guide, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 87
    • The mathematically rigorous texts, on the other hand, are unreadable for the non- specialist. I was looking for something in-between, a Goldilocks volume pitched just at my level, neither too easy nor too difficult.2013, Peter Collier, A Most Incomprehensible Thing: Notes Towards a Very Gentle Introduction to the Mathematics of Relativity, Incomprehensible Books, →ISBN, page 14

goldilocks meaning in Tamil

goldilocks in Tamil

பொன்னிற தலைமுடியர்

Forms of goldilocks

pluralgoldilocks
alternative uncommongoldylocks

Plural of goldilocks: goldilocks

Origin of goldilocks

From goldy + locks. Goldilocks is a traditional children's story and its protagonist.

Apparently from goldilocks, equivalent to goldy + locks (“tuft of hair, curl”).

Words formed from goldilocks

Phrases with goldilocks

Questions about goldilocks

What does goldilocks mean?
Goldilocks means a person with golden hair, especially a girl with long hair.
What is goldilocks in Tamil?
Goldilocks in Tamil is பொன்னிற தலைமுடியர். See Goldilocks meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is goldilocks?
Goldilocks can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce goldilocks?
Goldilocks is pronounced /ˈɡəʊldilɒks/.
What is the plural of goldilocks?
The plural of goldilocks is goldilocks.

Words near goldilocks in the dictionary

  1. Goldie's fern
  2. Goldie's wood fern
  3. goldier
  4. goldies
  5. goldiest
  6. goldilocks
  7. goldilocks buttercup
  8. Goldilocks economies
  9. Goldilocks economy
  10. Goldilocks planet
  11. Goldilocks planets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: goldilocks (page history and authors); Goldilocks (page history and authors); Goldilocks (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Goldilocks.wav.

Cite this entry: “goldilocks.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/goldilocks. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.