good

   Formerly a very frequently used vocative element. Almost everyone in the Shakespearean plays is addressed sooner or later as ‘good my lord’, ‘good uncle’, ‘good brother’, ‘good father’, ‘good cousin’, etc. The word originally referred to good birth, and the good qualities associated with nobility, having much in common in that respect with ‘gentle’. But as with that word, ‘good’ seems to have degenerated into a conventional noise, at most an indefinite commendation, as the Oxford English Dictionary expresses it. ‘Goodman’ and ‘Goodwife’ took on separate identities as conventional terms of address, but the more general expressions ‘my good man’ and ‘my good woman’ became offensively condescending to those so addressed. ‘Good’ still has this condescending note about it, even when it is used in a congratulatory way in exclamatory vocatives such as ‘good boy’, ‘good girl’.

   Such expressions become more acceptable, perhaps, when the friendly ‘old’ is included: ‘good old’ 4first name. As usual, a great deal depends on the tone of voice used by the speaker. ‘Good man’, said with pure enthusiasm, is unlikely to give offence. ‘Good’ is of course used in many pure exclamations, which gives rise to a joke in The Fox in the Attic, by Richard Hughes. A speaker absently addresses a bishop as ‘good lad’. He corrects himself hastily and calls him ‘good lord’, though he does so under his breath.