The word “goodly” in English

by Jakub Marian

Tip: Are you a non-native English speaker? I have just finished creating a Web App for people who enjoy learning by reading. Make sure to check it out; there's a lot of free content.

One of the first things non-native English speakers learn is that the adverbial form of “good” is irregular. We don’t say, for example, “he sings very goodly”; we say “he sings very well”. It may come as a surprise, then, that the word “goodly” also exists in English and was quite common in the past (but it does not mean the same as “well”).

“Goodly” is an adjective, not an adverb, and has two different meanings, both of which are rather formal or archaic. The only meaning that is still used today to a certain extent is “quite large in number or quantity”, as in

I had to pay a goodly sum for the car.
I know a goodly number of people who disagree with you.

The other meaning of “goodly”, which is almost never used in modern English but can be found in older literature, is “of pleasing or fine appearance”, e.g.

Loyalty to a sovereign is the mark of a goodly knight.

For the sake of completeness, we should mention that “goodly” has a third meaning, “graciously” (in which case it is an adverb), but this meaning is only found in literature so old that the word “goodly” will be of least concern, such as in the following excerpt from The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser:

Goodly they all that knight do entertaine,
  Right glad with him to have increast their crew:
  But to Duess’ each one himselfe did paine
  All kindnesse and faire courtesie to shew

By the way, have you already seen my brand new web app for non-native speakers of English? It's based on reading texts and learning by having all meanings, pronunciations, grammar forms etc. easily accessible. It looks like this:

0