Word.ws English Dictionary

making good

making good is the present participle and gerund 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 making good

What is making good the present participle and gerund of?
Making good is the present participle and gerund of make good.

Words near making good in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: making 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: “making good.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/making_good. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.