goody two shoes
9
8.2
- noun
- /ˈɡʊdi tuː ʃuz/
- Offensive
:
santurrón
- First of all, she's a goody-two-shoes.
- Miss Goody Two-shoes
- little goody two-shoes
- really a goody two-shoes
Examples
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Kobe Bryant--everybody thought he was Mr. Goody Two-shoes.
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Growing up, I was known as the goody two shoes who always followed the rules at school.
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Ah, you are one of them goody two shoes.
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Why are all you goody two shoes afraid to use your real names?
Blog text (10) -
I knew that goody-two-shoes bit was all an act.
Blog text (12) -
I must seem like such a Goody Two-shoes.
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I hear, back in the day, she used to be a goody two-shoes.
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You're a goody two shoes.
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These goody two-shoes are starting to bore me.
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Well if it isn't little miss goody two shoes, don't tattle on us okay?
Synonyms
47
7.9
A person, often a child, who behaves too well and annoys others
4
7.7
A person who always behaves very well to please teachers or adults
1
5.0
A person in a story who is kind and acts like a hero
Antonyms
How Virtuous
55
7.8
- Offensive
9
8.2
- Offensive
4
7.7
- Offensive
47
7.9
1
1.2
Surface Forms
Morphology
Although 'goody' by itself denotes a virtuous person, the addition of 'two' + 'shoes' does not contribute a transparent compositional meaning; the full phrase is an idiomatic intensifier whose sense ('overly virtuous, annoyingly moralistic') cannot be predicted from the literal words. This historical, language-specific expression would not be reliably understood by a B1 learner who only knew the constituent words, so it is best classified as opaque.
Etymology
Goody two shoes comes from an old children's story about a girl who was praised for getting shoes, and people called her Goody Two-Shoes because she now had two shoes and always behaved well. So goody two shoes now means 'a person who is annoyingly very well-behaved'.