good boy

• enPR: go͝od′ boi′
• (Received Pronunciation, General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈɡʊd ˌbɔɪ/

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• (General Australian, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈɡʊd ˌboɪ/
• (Scotland) IPA^(key): /ˈɡʉd ˌbɔɪ/
• (India) IPA^(key): /ˈɡʊɖ ˌbɔj/
• Hyphenation: good boy

good boy (plural good boys)

1. An obedient male dog, child, or someone who behaves like one, even when deemed inappropriate.

   Oh you're such a good boy, not reporting the crime because you didn't want to hurt anyone.

   • 1939 April 16, Ruth Reynolds, “Their Fantastic Honeymoon Is Over: He’s Slain, She’s in Jail, After Career of Banditry”, in Sunday News, volume 19, number 1, New York, N.Y., →ISSN, →OCLC, page C7, column 1:

     Perhaps now he’d had his lesson. Perhaps now he’d be a good boy! Again a Fugitive After Felonious Asault. So they said, and thought, and hoped—never dreaming that “John O’Malley” was giving a song and dance to a 14-year-old junior-high-schooler in an East Kirk St. roller skating rink!

   • 1939 September 19, Lemuel F. Parton, “Who’s News Today”, in Bergen Evening Record, volume 45, number 89, Hackensack, N.J., page 22:

     When he was 13, his mother gave him a big goat’s-milk cheese and sent him trudging far over the hills to a church school to study for the priesthood, and she admonished him to be a good boy.

   • 1956, Frances Martin, Summer Meridian, London: Cassell & Company Ltd, page 190:

     The moment passed, and she packed him firmly off with cheerful, conventional, headmistressy remarks about being a good boy, and next term coming soon.

   • 2011 June 26, “Linguistically correct”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     English is scandalously lacking in politically and linguistically correct antonyms of this sort. The Queen can create the Duchess of Cambridge, so surely I can create the much-needed expressions "cisgress" (be a good boy), "cisvestite" (bloke wearing trousers), "cisaction" (no deal), and "cisom" (something that isn't a lintel). Anyone who doesn't disagree is a transsy.

2. (humorous) A demeaning term of address to a male.

• good girl

• attaboy

good boy

1. (idiomatic) Well done, to a male.
2. Said as praise to an obedient male dog or other male domesticated animal; see also who's a good boy.

   Fetch! Fetch! — (dog fetches stick) — Good boy!

   • 2012 September 1, 0:14 from the start, in Putin Learns Putin Behind Plot To Assassinate Putin‎^[2], The Onion, archived from the original on 20 July 2016:

     Week in and week out you come back like a housebroken Pomeranian loyal to the bitter end. Good boy.

3. (humorous) Used to demean someone.