Word.ws English Dictionary

made good

made good is the simple past and past participle of make good.

Meaning of make good

Verb

make good (third-person singular simple present makes good, present participle making good, simple past and past participle made good)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To achieve substantial success in life, often in business.
    • Near-synonym: come good
    Synonyms:
    come good
  2. (intransitive, transitive, with-on) To complete successfully; to fulfil (a promise).
    • He made good his threat and made good his escape by jumping from a second-story window.
  3. To match the first player's bet with one's own, rather than dropping out.
    • After all the players who determine to go in have made good the bet of the player who opened the Jack Pot, and the hands have been filled […]1885, William Brisbane Dick, The American Hoyle: Or, Gentleman's Hand-book of Games
  4. (intransitive, transitive, with-on) To remedy or compensate for (a defect or deficiency).
    • The company made good the damage by paying my repair costs.
  5. (idiomatic) To make (a surface) level or even.
    • […] the only action that will be required prior to decoration will be to wash down, make good and apply a fresh paint system.2005, Roy Hughes, Painting and Decorating, page 44

Questions about made good

What is made good the simple past and past participle of?
Made good is the simple past and past participle of make good.

Words near made good in the dictionary

  1. made friendly
  2. made friends
  3. made fun of
  4. made game of
  5. made garden
  6. made good
  7. made good on
  8. made good one's running
  9. made good time
  10. made ground
  11. made hand

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: made good (page history and authors); make good (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: “made good.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/made_good. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.