Word.ws English Dictionary

goodness gracious

/ˈɡʊdnɪs ˌɡɹeɪʃəs/

goodness gracious interjection: expressing great surprise.

Interjection

  1. (dated, euphemistic, idiomatic) Expressing great surprise.
    • Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!1957, Otis Blackwell, Jack Hammer, Great Balls of Fire
    Synonyms:
    wow

Synonyms of goodness gracious

Questions about goodness gracious

What does goodness gracious mean?
Goodness gracious means expressing great surprise.
What part of speech is goodness gracious?
Goodness gracious is an interjection.
How do you pronounce goodness gracious?
Goodness gracious is pronounced /ˈɡʊdnɪs ˌɡɹeɪʃəs/.

Words near goodness gracious in the dictionary

  1. goodnaturedly
  2. goodnaturedness
  3. Goodner
  4. Goodners
  5. goodness
  6. goodness gracious
  7. goodness gracious me
  8. goodness knows
  9. goodness me
  10. goodnesse
  11. goodnesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: goodness gracious (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-goodness gracious.ogg.

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