Word.ws English Dictionary

no good deed goes unpunished

no good deed goes unpunished proverb: actions of generosity often go unappreciated or are met with outright hostility or demands for further work.

Proverb

no good deed goes unpunished

  1. Actions of generosity often go unappreciated or are met with outright hostility or demands for further work.

no good deed goes unpunished meaning in Vietnamese

no good deed goes unpunished in Vietnamese

beneficial actions often go unappreciated etc.
làm ơn mắc oán

Forms of no good deed goes unpunished

alternative formno good deed ever goes unpunished

Origin of no good deed goes unpunished

According to the website Grammarist, there is no one origin for the phrase "let no good deed go unpunished." However, it also lists several written examples from the 20th century, starting with a 1942 phrase attributed to Walter Winchell, in which he wrote (in a column) "[It] reminds me of the line diplomats use: ‘No good deed goes unpunished in Washington.” On top of that, it lists one from Dante's "The Divine Comedy" ("love is the seed in you of every virtue/and of all acts deserving punishment."). This can be found at the website https://grammarist.com/proverb/no-good-deed-goes-unpunished/. Meanwhile, the website Quote Investigator gives several older examples of these phrases, including one from a 12th-century text that was translated into English in 1923, and which discussed a malevolent, though the website indicated that it wasn't written like it was a proverb. As well, two came from 1927 (one of which used the word "kindness" in place of "good deed") and another from 1938 ("Every good deed brings its own punishment"), which was the earliest match that website found which it considered to be strong. This can be found at the website...

Questions about no good deed goes unpunished

What does no good deed goes unpunished mean?
No good deed goes unpunished means actions of generosity often go unappreciated or are met with outright hostility or demands for further work.
What is no good deed goes unpunished in Vietnamese?
No good deed goes unpunished in Vietnamese is làm ơn mắc oán. See No good deed goes unpunished meaning in Vietnamese.
What part of speech is no good deed goes unpunished?
No good deed goes unpunished is a proverb.

Words near no good deed goes unpunished in the dictionary

  1. no goes
  2. no good
  3. no good ass
  4. no good asses
  5. no good deed ever goes unpunished
  6. no good deed goes unpunished
  7. no gos
  8. no great scratch
  9. no great shakes
  10. No Gun Ri
  11. no guts, no glory

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: no good deed goes unpunished (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:

Cite this entry: “no good deed goes unpunished.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/no_good_deed_goes_unpunished. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.