do-gooder - 3 dictionary results
do-good⋅er
[doo-goo
d-er, -good-] 
–noun
| a well-intentioned but naive and often ineffectual social or political reformer. |
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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Link To do-gooder
| do-good·er (dōō'gŏŏd'ər) n. A naive idealist who supports philanthropic or humanitarian causes or reforms. |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source
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.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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