4 results for: do-gooder

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do work

do wrong

do you mind!

do's and don'ts

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do-all

do-dad

do-good

do-gooder

do-gooderism

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Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This

do-good·er

Audio Help [doo-good-er, -goo

d-] Pronunciation Key

–noun

a well-intentioned but naive and often ineffectual social or political reformer.

[Origin: 1925–30, Americanism; do good + -er¹

]

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
do-gooder

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American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

do-good·er (dōō'gŏŏd'ər)
n. A naive idealist who supports philanthropic or humanitarian causes or reforms.

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Online Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
do-gooder

"a person who seeks to correct social ills in an idealistic, but usually impractical or superficial, way," 1654 (as do-good), in "Zootomia, or Observations on the Present Manners of the English: Briefly Anatomizing the Living by the Dead. With An Usefull Detection of the Mountebanks of Both Sexes," written by Richard Whitlock, a medical doctor. Probably used even then with a taint of impractical idealism. Modern pejorative use seems to have begun on the socialist left, mocking those who were unwilling to take a hard line. OED has this citation, from "The Nation" in 1923:

"There is nothing the matter with the United States except ... the parlor socialists, up-lifters, and do-goods."

The form do-gooder appears in Amer.Eng. from 1927, presumably because do-good was no longer felt as sufficiently noun-like. A slightly older word for this was goo-goo.

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