Word.ws English Dictionary

gooden

gooden verb: to make good; improve; better; perfect.

Verb (1)

gooden (third-person singular simple present goodens, present participle goodening, simple past and past participle goodened)

  1. (transitive) To make good; improve; better; perfect.
    • For many years we have endeavored to comprehend how a/b could transform highly intelligent and in many respects 'model' girls and women (and sometimes boys and men) into unwitting bystanders and accomplices to their own torture and impending death while remaining convinced that they are being...2009, Helen Malson, Maree Burns, Critical Feminist Approaches to Eating Dis/Orders
    • The passive voice is all-pervasive. This is a world in which virtue is achieved by not doing things, only thus, like Jesus (Wright tells us) may we “be Goodened with Good.2010, Richard Francis, Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia
  2. (intransitive) To become good.
  3. (UK, dialectal, intransitive) To grow; improve; prosper.

Verb (2)

gooden (third-person singular simple present goodens, present participle goodening, simple past and past participle goodened)

  1. (dialectal, intransitive) To perambulate, usually town to town, collecting alms, gifts, or small gratuities before Christmas-time, usually on St. Thomas's Day.
    • Phoebe, in support of a good old Sussex custom, regularly, on St. Thomas's Day, December 21st, went out "Goodening," visiting well-to-do parishioners, to gossip upon the past, over hot elderberry wine and plum cake, and to receive doles, either in money or materials, [...]1871, Henry Martin, The history of Brighton and environs
    • In 1899 the oldest dame who took part in the ceremony was aged ninety-three, while in 1904 a widow "goodened" for the thirtieth year in succession.1910, Peter Hampson Ditchfield, Vanishing England: the book
    Synonyms:
    mump

Proper noun capitalized: Gooden

Gooden (plural Goodens)

  1. A surname.

Synonyms of gooden

Forms of gooden

Verb
third-person singular presentgoodens
present participlegoodening
past participlegoodened
pastgoodened
Proper noun
pluralGoodens

Origin of gooden

From good + -en. Compare Middle English goden, godien (“to make good, become good, endow with goods”), from Old English gōdian (“to improve, get better; make better; endow, enrich”). More at good.

Back-formation from goodening, an alteration of gooding (“to receive goods or goodies”), believed to be derived from goody or perhaps a survival of Middle English goden, godien (“to make good, become good, endow with goods”), from Old English gōdian (“to improve, get better; make better; endow, enrich”). Alternative etymology derives this term from earlier hoodening, hodening perhaps a corruption of Woden (“Odin”).

Words formed from gooden

Questions about gooden

What does gooden mean?
Gooden means to make good; improve; better; perfect.
What part of speech is gooden?
Gooden can be a verb or a proper noun.
What is the past tense of gooden?
The past tense of gooden is goodened.

Words near gooden in the dictionary

  1. goodeine
  2. goodeines
  3. goodeins
  4. Goodell
  5. Goodells
  6. gooden
  7. goodened
  8. goodenia
  9. goodeniaceous
  10. goodening
  11. Goodenough

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gooden (page history and authors); Gooden (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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Cite this entry: “gooden.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gooden. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.