Word.ws English Dictionary

the good die young

the good die young proverb: well-regarded people who are morally upright, kind, and beneficent tend to die at a younger age than do most people.

Proverb

the good die young

  1. Well-regarded people who are morally upright, kind, and beneficent tend to die at a younger age than do most people.
    • "You'll live," put in Mr. Pedagog, with a chuckle. "The good die young."1895, John Kendrick Bangs, chapter 9, in The Idiot
    • [I]t is the men and women with vices who have ruled the world. The good die young because there is no useful work for them to do.1906, E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Malefactor, Book 1, ch. 12

Forms of the good die young

alternative formonly the good die young

Origin of the good die young

Variant of the Latin Quem di diligunt adulescens moritur ("whom the gods love dies young"), from Plautus's Bacchides, apparently adapted from a line in Dis Exapaton (The Double Deceiver) by Menander.

Questions about the good die young

What does the good die young mean?
The good die young means well-regarded people who are morally upright, kind, and beneficent tend to die at a younger age than do most people.
What part of speech is the good die young?
The good die young is a proverb.

Words near the good die young in the dictionary

  1. the genie's out of the bottle
  2. the ghost walks
  3. the girls are fighting
  4. The Glen
  5. the gods smile on someone
  6. the good die young
  7. the good doctor
  8. the good doctors
  9. The Gorge
  10. the grapes are sour anyway
  11. the grass is always greener

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: the good die young (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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