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Glite Dictionary
good and proper

good and proper

1 6.2
Completely and in the right way
  • idiom
  • Informal
translation icon : bien y de verdad
  • The team celebrated their victory good and proper with a big party.
  • do it good and proper

Examples

  • You listen to me, and you listen good and proper.

    The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

  • He explained the rules good and proper so that everyone understood.

  • And so this, it seems to us, is a, is a good and proper place for government to step in.

  • We earned it good and proper.

    Prizefighter: The Life of Jem Belcher (2022)

  • Testing the others' abilities under combat conditions was all good and proper.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • I thought you'd done for yourself good and proper.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • He messed himself up good and proper.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • You've been taken for a ride good and proper, haven't you?

    Cinderella (2000)

  • She completed the project good and proper, leaving no detail overlooked.

Synonyms

properly
vsgood and proper
686 1.0

To do something in the right way

focuses on being complete and satisfactory rather than only being correct
thoroughly
vsgood and proper
259 3.5

To do something completely and carefully

is more informal and stresses a fully satisfactory result over detailed steps

Antonyms

badly
283 1.0

In a way that is not good or skillful

inadequately
8 4.4

In a way that is not good enough

How Thorough

good and proper
  • Informal
1 6.2
properly
686 1.0
partly
375 1.0

Surface Forms

good and proper positive

Morphology

good + and + proper

The sense 'thoroughly; in a complete and satisfactory way' is directly inferable from combining 'good' and 'proper' — the phrase simply intensifies the idea of doing something well and correctly. This adjectival pairing joined by 'and' is a transparent emphatic pattern in English that a B1 learner who knows the constituents would readily interpret.

Etymology

Good and proper comes from everyday speech where people put good and proper together to make a stronger idea. It gives the picture of something done both well and correctly, so it now means 'thoroughly' or 'completely'.