Meaning
- too virtuous.
- wanting to do everything right to avoid repercussions with the law.
- living a straight, clean life.
- being overly virtuous to achieve a hidden agenda.
Example Sentences
- She's not a goody-two-shoes, but she's a good woman.
- The former Miss World has stopped displaying her goody-two-shoes image in the last several months.
- Off the pitch, she wasn't the goody two shoes she was portrayed. However, players read about her on sports pages, and her private life remained that way.
- There's no need to be such a goody two shoes.
- James is a real goody two-shoes. Avoid showing him the beers, or he'll inform your parents.
- The residents of this area are goody-two-shoes. If you do something wrong in their presence, they'll contact law enforcement on you immediately.
Origin
The history of the idiom " goody two shoes" is, in part, a literary one. It came from a story, "The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes," anonymously published in 1765, about an orphan girl who used to wear only one shoe. Yet this was different from where the phrase originally came from. The idiom is older than the 1765 story. For example, the phrase appears in " Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque," written by Charles Cotton in 1670. The young orphan girl's story likely existed as an oral folk tale before appearing in print. Many years after the story's publication, people regarded it as a fine children's story, and due to its length, it's regarded as the first novel for minors. Regarding the plot, the story is like that of Cinderella. The story's outline tallies with the phrase's modern meaning, which is someone who is excessively virtuous.
