Word.ws English Dictionary

good egg

UK/ˈɡʊd ɛɡ/

good egg noun: a good person, someone to be trusted; a friend.

Noun

good egg (plural good eggs)

  1. (UK, US, idiomatic) A good person, someone to be trusted; a friend.
    • The chemist and the bacteriologist gave him the third degree and, like most criminals, it was found difficult to tell just when a good egg began to be bad, and it appeared that it depended largely on how he was handled, especially in his youth, […]1915, Good Housekeeping, volume 6, New York, N.Y.: Phelps Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 371
    • Tom speaks: "I have a girl friend I want you to meet. She's a good egg."1942, The Texas Outlook, volume 26, Austin, Tex.: Texas State Teachers Association, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 42
    Antonyms:
    bad egg

Examples of good egg in a sentence

  • He's a big shot in pictures and he's a good egg.1944, James T[homas] Farrell, To Whom It May Concern: More Stories, Garden City, N.Y.: The Sun Dial Press, →OCLC, page 23:
  • In contrast, Saito […] was one of the good eggs … He would let us rest whenever the coast was clear and even shared the odd cigarette.1997, Brereton Greenhous, “Liberation”, in “C” Force to Hong Kong: A Canadian Catastrophe, 1941–1945 (Canadian War Museum Historical...

Antonyms of good egg

Forms of good egg

pluralgood eggs

Origin of good egg

Probably a humorous antonym of bad egg (“someone whose behaviour is reprehensible or irresponsible; a rogue”). The earliest known usage of the phrase was by Rudyard Kipling in his 1904 book "Traffics & Discoveries": "'Good egg!' quoth Moorshed, and brought his hand down on the wide shoulders with the smack of a beaver's tail."

Questions about good egg

What does good egg mean?
Good egg means a good person, someone to be trusted; a friend.
How do you use good egg in a sentence?
He's a big shot in pictures and he's a good egg.
What part of speech is good egg?
Good egg is a noun.
How do you pronounce good egg?
Good egg is pronounced /ˈɡʊd ɛɡ/ (UK).
What is the plural of good egg?
The plural of good egg is good eggs.

Words near good egg in the dictionary

  1. good delivery
  2. good doctor
  3. good doctors
  4. good drunk
  5. good drunks
  6. good egg
  7. good eggs
  8. good ending
  9. good endings
  10. good enough
  11. good enough for government work

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: good egg (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: en-au-good egg.ogg.

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