Goodwill

How to spell goodwill

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce goodwill

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does goodwill mean?

1. nounA friendly, helpful, or benevolent attitude towards others.
2. nounThe intangible value of a business arising from its reputation and customer base, beyond its physical assets.

Goodwill in a sentence

• The volunteers worked all weekend out of pure goodwill.

• The buyer paid extra for the goodwill built up over thirty years of trading.

• The neighbours shovelled the path as a gesture of goodwill.

• The accountant recorded the goodwill as an intangible asset on the balance sheet.

Where does goodwill come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Goodwill is a native English compound, joining the everyday words 'good' and 'will'. Both halves trace back to Old English: 'god' meant pleasing, fitting, or virtuous, while 'willa' meant a wish, desire, or settled intention of the mind. Put together, the phrase originally described a kindly disposition or a sincere wish for another person's benefit, a sense recorded in English since before the year 1000. Over the centuries the single closed-up form 'goodwill' came to mean the friendly reputation of a person or business, and by the nineteenth century accountants borrowed it for the intangible value a firm's good name adds beyond its physical assets. Because it is simply two familiar words fused, the only real spelling decision is whether to write it as one word, two words, or hyphenated; modern usage settles on the single solid form 'goodwill'.

How the word is built

• good (Old English god: pleasing, virtuous)
• will (Old English willa: wish, desire, intention)