Word.ws English Dictionary

good boy

UK/ˈɡʊd ˌbɔɪ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/ˈɡʊd ˌboɪ/

good boy noun: an obedient male dog, child, or someone who behaves like one, even when deemed inappropriate.

Noun

good boy (plural good boys)

  1. An obedient male dog, child, or someone who behaves like one, even when deemed inappropriate.
    • Oh you're such a good boy, not reporting the crime because you didn't want to hurt anyone.
    • Perhaps now he’d had his lesson. Perhaps now he’d be a good boy! Again a Fugitive After Felonious Asault. So they said, and thought, and hoped—never dreaming that “John O’Malley” was giving a song and dance to a 14-year-old junior-high-schooler in an East Kirk St. roller skating rink!1939 April 16, Ruth Reynolds, “Their Fantastic Honeymoon Is Over: He’s Slain, She’s in Jail, After Career of Banditry”, in Sunday News, volume 19, number 1, New York, N.Y., →ISSN, →OCLC, page C7...
  2. (humorous) A demeaning term of address to a male.

Interjection

  1. (idiomatic) Well done, to a male.
  2. Said as praise to an obedient male dog or other male domesticated animal; see also who's a good boy.
    • Fetch! Fetch! — (dog fetches stick) — Good boy!
    • Week in and week out you come back like a housebroken Pomeranian loyal to the bitter end. Good boy.2012 September 1, 0:14 from the start, in Putin Learns Putin Behind Plot To Assassinate Putin, The Onion, archived from the original on 20 Jul 2016
  3. (humorous) Used to demean someone.

Examples of good boy in a sentence

  • When he was 13, his mother gave him a big goat’s-milk cheese and sent him trudging far over the hills to a church school to study for the priesthood, and she admonished him to be a good boy.1939 September 19, Lemuel F. Parton, “Who’s News Today”, in Bergen Evening Record, volume 45, number 89, Hackensack, N.J., page 22:
  • The moment passed, and she packed him firmly off with cheerful, conventional, headmistressy remarks about being a good boy, and next term coming soon.1956, Frances Martin, Summer Meridian, London: Cassell & Company Ltd, page 190:

Forms of good boy

pluralgood boys

Words formed from good boy

Questions about good boy

What does good boy mean?
Good boy means an obedient male dog, child, or someone who behaves like one, even when deemed inappropriate.
How do you use good boy in a sentence?
When he was 13, his mother gave him a big goat’s-milk cheese and sent him trudging far over the hills to a church school to study for the priesthood, and she admonished him to be a good boy.
What part of speech is good boy?
Good boy can be a noun or an interjection.
How do you pronounce good boy?
Good boy is pronounced /ˈɡʊd ˌbɔɪ/ (UK).
What is the plural of good boy?
The plural of good boy is good boys.

Words near good boy in the dictionary

  1. good black don't crack
  2. good boi
  3. good bois
  4. good book
  5. good books
  6. good boy
  7. good boys
  8. good boys deserve fudge always
  9. good breath
  10. good breaths
  11. good bye

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: good boy (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-NaomiAmethyst-good boi.wav.

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