what-s-good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
48 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "what-s-good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander", 48-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "what-s-good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "what-s-good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
what's good for the goose is good for the gander is aEnglishproverb. It means: Literally, what is good for a female goose is equally good for a male goose (gander); or, what is good for a woman should be equally good for a man.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | what's good for the goose is good for the gander |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proverb |
| Letters | 48 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for what's good for the goose is good for the gander is 48 letters long, classified as aproverb. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for what's good for the goose is good for the gander in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From earlier what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander (1670s). Other early forms include “as deep drinketh the goose as the gander” (1562). Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is what's good for the goose is good for the gander, spelled W-H-A-T-'-S- -G-O-O-D- -F-O-R- -T-H-E- -G-O-O-S-E- -I-S- -G-O-O-D- -F-O-R- -T-H-E- -G-A-N-D-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Literally, what is good for a female goose is equally good for a male goose (gander); or, what is good for a woman should be equally good for a man.
- 2If something is good for one person, it should be equally good for another person; someone who treats another in a certain way should not complain if the same is done to them.
Etymology
From earlier what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander (1670s). Other early forms include “as deep drinketh the goose as the gander” (1562).
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: