good boy

plural good boys

1. An obedient male dog, child, or someone who behaves like one, even when deemed inappropriate.

   Oh you're such a good boy, not reporting the crime because you didn't want to hurt anyone.

   4 more examples

   Perhaps now he’d had his lesson. Perhaps now he’d be a good boy! Again a Fugitive After Felonious Asault. So they said, and thought, and hoped—never dreaming that “John O’Malley” was giving a song and dance to a 14-year-old junior-high-schooler in an East Kirk St. roller skating rink!

   1939 April 16, Ruth Reynolds, “Their Fantastic Honeymoon Is Over: He’s Slain, She’s in Jail, After Career of Banditry”, in Sunday News, volume 19, number 1, New York, N.Y., →ISSN, →OCLC, page C7, column 1

   When he was 13, his mother gave him a big goat’s-milk cheese and sent him trudging far over the hills to a church school to study for the priesthood, and she admonished him to be a good boy.

   1939 September 19, Lemuel F. Parton, “Who’s News Today”, in Bergen Evening Record, volume 45, number 89, Hackensack, N.J., page 22

   The moment passed, and she packed him firmly off with cheerful, conventional, headmistressy remarks about being a good boy, and next term coming soon.

   1956, Frances Martin, Summer Meridian, London: Cassell & Company Ltd, page 190

   English is scandalously lacking in politically and linguistically correct antonyms of this sort. The Queen can create the Duchess of Cambridge, so surely I can create the much-needed expressions "cisgress" (be a good boy), "cisvestite" (bloke wearing trousers), "cisaction" (no deal), and "cisom" (something that isn't a lintel). Anyone who doesn't disagree is a transsy.

   2011 June 26, “Linguistically correct”, in The Guardian

2. humorousA demeaning term of address to a male.

1. idiomaticWell done, to a male.
2. Said as praise to an obedient male dog or other male domesticated animal; see also who's a good boy.

   Fetch! Fetch! — (dog fetches stick) — Good boy!

   1 more example

   Week in and week out you come back like a housebroken Pomeranian loyal to the bitter end. Good boy.

   2012 September 1, 0:14 from the start, in Putin Learns Putin Behind Plot To Assassinate Putin, The Onion, archived from the original on 20 Jul 2016

3. humorousUsed to demean someone.