honest-to-goodness

honest-to-goodness adjective: real; genuine. Also the alternative form of honest to goodness.

Adjective

honest-to-goodness (comparative more honest-to-goodness, superlative most honest-to-goodness)

(attributive) Real; genuine.
- Is the clam chowder made with honest-to-goodness clams?
- [']I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman.' 'Superman?' Clevinger cried. 'Superman?' 'Supraman,' Yossarian corrected.1961 (republished 2010), Joseph Heller, Catch-22, London: Vintage Books, ISBN 978-0-09-955218-5, page 22

honest-to-goodness is also the alternative form of honest to goodness.

At first glance, Lincoln seemed caught in a time warp—a place of 1930s tourist cabins and Mom-and-Pop diners where one could get honest-to-goodness milk shakes, made in a blender with real ice cream.2003, Alston Chase, “Ah, Wilderness!”, in Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist, New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton &...
"Young lady, that's the most honest-to-goodness useful thing I ever heard hail from a schoolroom!"2011, John Rogers, Clara Nickerson Boden, The Cut of Her Jib, page 82:

comparative	more honest-to-goodness
superlative	most honest-to-goodness

What does honest-to-goodness mean?: Honest-to-goodness means real; genuine.
How do you use honest-to-goodness in a sentence?: At first glance, Lincoln seemed caught in a time warp—a place of 1930s tourist cabins and Mom-and-Pop diners where one could get honest-to-goodness milk shakes, made in a blender with real ice cream.
What part of speech is honest-to-goodness?: Honest-to-goodness is an adjective.

Adapted from Wiktionary: honest-to-goodness (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: 2026-09-02

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