The story
- Old English · inherited fromgōdlēas“without good, miserable, bad, evil”
- Middle English · inherited fromgoodles“poor, without goods or property”
- English todaygoodless
From Middle English goodles (“poor, without goods or property”), from Old English gōdlēas (“without good, miserable, bad, evil”), equivalent to good + -less.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.