good guy
Americannoun
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a moral or noble person; a hero or someone perceived as one.
The film's twist is that the monster turns out to be the good guy.
-
any person who is regarded as habitually prone to doing good things or as being morally correct.
There are times in this job where we don't feel like the good guys.
Etymology
Origin of good guy
An Americanism first recorded in 1920–25
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
After all, if he’s not a good guy, who is?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 23, 2026
When a beefy bad guy who was about to squish a normal-sized good guy received a crippling blow to the scrotum, I laughed.
From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026
“He definitely didn’t want that order of, you know, publicity. He wanted just to say to me, ‘I’m a good guy.’
From Salon ● May 29, 2026
After Perry’s death, Morrison wrote, Iwamasa insisted on speaking at the funeral and clung to the family, “as if he was somehow the good guy who tried to save Matthew.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 27, 2026
I’ve seen this kind of thing in the movies, where the good guy eludes the bad one in some kind of complicated public space, but I never imagined doing it myself.
From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
