Crossword clues for do-gooder
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"a person who seeks to correct social ills in an idealistic, but usually impractical or superficial, way," 1650s (as do-good), in "Zootomia, or Observations on the Present Manners of the English: Briefly Anatomizing the Living by the Dead. With An Usefull Detection of the Mountebanks of Both Sexes," written by Richard Whitlock, a medical doctor. Probably used even then with a taint of impractical idealism. Modern pejorative use seems to have begun on the socialist left, mocking those who were unwilling to take a hard line. OED has this citation, from "The Nation" in 1923:\n\nThere is nothing the matter with the United States except ... the parlor socialists, up-lifters, and do-goods.\n\nThe form do-gooder appears in American English from 1927, presumably because do-good was no longer felt as sufficiently noun-like. A slightly older word for this was goo-goo.
Wiktionary
n. (context derogatory English) One who advocates or performs what they believe to be the morally superior course of action, even in the face of overwhelming experience or factual evidence that its effect is only irrelevant or harmful.
WordNet
n. someone devoted to the promotion of human welfare and to social reforms [syn: humanitarian, improver]
Usage examples of "do-gooder".
He was a reluctant fire-bringer, muttering to himself about a man he had yet to meet named Hans Rilke who was a do-gooder with an undurable liver.
The Governor had thus been handed the choice of outraging the Committeewoman and Motel Association with his veto, or the do-gooders with his signature.
We have to be, otherwise the crims would run rings around us and do-gooders like you would be lying in the streets with your throats cut.
His voice coming from no where said: "You made Hampton Drane a do-gooder.
So Herbie had spent a few weeks in the East boning up on VISTA lore, and then he'd been shipped on a bus with six other peagreen do-gooders to Chamisa-ville, where he had wanted to be stationed.
He had never been plagued by do-gooders and he wasn't about to become vulnerable now.
But do-gooders get up my nose, they're trying to take over the fucking world .
And in the summer all the do-gooders are busy with their own vacations, their own trips to the beach, so they forget about us.
Tax collectors, land grabbers, nosey do-gooders more self-righteous than any Bible-poundin' preacher ever born!
Phillip decided he wouldn't have to worry about a couple of wimps that the do-gooders had raised.
She hated do-gooders, those she called the goody-goodies, but her own goodness surrounded her like a tangible, and visible magnetic field.
Climbing from vehicles are users and abusers, do-gooders and self-servers, Californicators and Colorapists and more Texas Trash, Steven Seagal and John Denver and Al Gore lookalikes beside men with chainsaws and women with feathers and flowers in their hair, granolas who refuse to carry firearms into wilderness and fringe fucks for whom bazookas aren't big enough.
But, with both the government and the other circuses turning their food-consuming animals into consumable food for human beings, some zealous do-gooders are likely to look on us as harboring, almost literally, dogs in the manger.
His killings, every one, had been committed against people associated with the underworld, or against misinformed do-gooders who had somehow become entangled in the wrong mess, impeding the assassin's progress.
But the do-gooders attempted to 'appeal to their better natures,' to 'reach them,' to 'spark their moral sense.