Word.ws English Dictionary

out of the goodness of one's heart

out of the goodness of one's heart prepositional phrase: motivated by genuine altruism, as opposed to self-serving incentives.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Motivated by genuine altruism, as opposed to self-serving incentives.
    • You really think that conman offered you assistance out of the goodness of his heart? Doubtful. He must be working an angle.

Questions about out of the goodness of one's heart

What does out of the goodness of one's heart mean?
Out of the goodness of one's heart means motivated by genuine altruism, as opposed to self-serving incentives.
What part of speech is out of the goodness of one's heart?
Out of the goodness of one's heart is a prepositional phrase.

Words near out of the goodness of one's heart in the dictionary

  1. out of the common
  2. out of the corner of one's eye
  3. out of the frying pan and into the fire
  4. out of the frying pan, into the fire
  5. out of the gate
  6. out of the goodness of one's heart
  7. out of the loop
  8. out of the money
  9. out of the mouths of babes
  10. out of the mouths of babes and sucklings
  11. out of the ordinary

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: out of the goodness of one's heart (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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