Word.ws English Dictionary

goody

/ˈɡʊdi/

goody interjection: used to indicate pleasure or delight. Also the alternative form of goodie.

Interjection

  1. (informal) Used to indicate pleasure or delight.
    • Oh goody, ice cream!
    Synonyms:
    yippee

Noun (1)

goody (plural goodies)

  1. (informal) A small amount of something good to eat.
    • […] when the pleasant time of night is come, and the stewardess is tucking up the ladies, and putting oranges and other goodies under their pillows, and the menfolk assemble in the capstan house to smoke their last cigar.1877, Official Guide and Album of the Cunard Steamship Company, page 95
    • She slid the goody out into her hand and gave a little aww. He'd baked her a dark chocolate cookie with a white heart swirled on the top. “You are so sweet. I'm going to save this for later, when I need a little pick-me-up, ...2016, Gail Chianese, Fiancé for Keeps, Lyrical Press, →ISBN
  2. (informal) Any small, usually free, item.
    • The new tax bill has something for everyone, it's true: a cornucopia of savings for the middle class, plenty of goodies for the rich and poor--and a dagger in the back for upper-income wage slaves.1997 August 4, Daniel Kadlec, “The Tax Bill: Money In Motion”, in CNN
  3. (Ireland) Pudding made by boiling bread in milk with sugar and spices.
  4. (colloquial) That which is good, the good part of something, which one desires to extract or use up.
    • Use flour to thicken the gravy and get all the goody out of the pan ... make the gravy right in it. I know of nothing that beats mashed potatoes with this.1962, Phil DeGraff, Birches, Beaches & Belches
    • But you sure took the goody out of the converter. That is, physically you didn't do any damage, the converter just doesn't work chemically any more. If you have to be "emissions-legal" some day, you'll have to replace the converter.1979, Popular Science, page 26
  5. An American fish, the lafayette or spot.

Adjective

goody (comparative goodier, superlative goodiest)

  1. Synonym of goody-goody (“mawkishly good; weakly benevolent or pious”).
    Synonyms:
    goody-goody

Noun (2)

goody (plural goodies)

  1. (obsolete) Goodwife, a 17th-century Puritan honorific for an adult woman.

Proper noun capitalized: Goody

Goody (countable and uncountable, plural Goodys)

  1. A surname from Old English.
    • Rankin sanctioned Ayala $3,000 and kicked him off the lawsuit after the lawyer admitted incorporating the hallucinated AI-generated cases in the brief. Morgan and Goody were sanctioned $1,000 each.2025 February 10, Debra Cassens Weiss, “No. 42 law firm by head count sanctioned over fake case citations generated by AI”, in ABA Journal, archived from the original on 14 Feb 2025
  2. A unisex given name transferred from the surname, of rare usage
  3. An unincorporated community in Pike County, Kentucky, United States.

Also used as

goody is also the alternative form of goodie.

Examples of goody in a sentence

  • When I was a kid I would never throw away my gum until I'd “chewed all the goody out of it." And so it is with Eden joys.1998, Becky Freeman, A View from the Porch Swing: Musings on a Complicated Search for the Simple Life, B & H Publishing Group, →ISBN:
  • You have to put the time in to get the goody out.2001, Glenn Young, The Best American Short Plays 1999-2000, Hal Leonard Corporation, →ISBN, page 48:
  • She loved to eat raw cake dough and she enjoyed licking icing off the utensils and getting all the goody from the inside of the icing cans.2003, Jerry Pilcher, Gloria's Song: A Celebration of Living in the Face of Cancer, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 29:
  • All the pretty notes are gone out of music, Nothing but bad tunes and sounds, When you take all the goody out of anything pretty, What you got left is worse 'n coffee grounds.2012, Bobby Nimocks, “BALLAD OF THE CHRISTMAS BLUES”, in Filets: A Literary Treat for Gourmet Appetites, Author House, →ISBN, page 56:

All 36 example sentences with goody

Synonyms of goody

Forms of goody

Interjection
alternative formgoodie
Noun
pluralgoodies
Adjective
comparativegoodier
superlativegoodiest
Proper noun
pluralGoodys
alternative formGoodey

Plural of goody: goodies

Origin of goody

From good + -y (suffix forming colloquialisms), influenced by the noun (Etymology 2).

From good + -y (nominal suffix).

From good + -y (adjectival suffix).

Words formed from goody

Phrases with goody

Words that rhyme with goody

Questions about goody

What does goody mean?
Goody means used to indicate pleasure or delight.
How do you use goody in a sentence?
When I was a kid I would never throw away my gum until I'd “chewed all the goody out of it." And so it is with Eden joys.
What part of speech is goody?
Goody can be an interjection, a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce goody?
Goody is pronounced /ˈɡʊdi/.

Words near goody in the dictionary

  1. Goodwood
  2. Goodwood Island
  3. Goodwright
  4. Goodwyn
  5. Goodwyns
  6. goody
  7. goody bag
  8. goody bags
  9. goody goodies
  10. goody goody
  11. goody goody gumdrops

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: goody (page history and authors); Goody (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-goody.wav.

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