good egg

plural good eggs

1. UKUSidiomaticA good person, someone to be trusted; a friend.

   Tom speaks: "I have a girl friend I want you to meet. She's a good egg."

   1942, The Texas Outlook, volume 26, Austin, Tex.: Texas State Teachers Association, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 42

   5 more examples

   The chemist and the bacteriologist gave him the third degree and, like most criminals, it was found difficult to tell just when a good egg began to be bad, and it appeared that it depended largely on how he was handled, especially in his youth, […]

   1915, Good Housekeeping, volume 6, New York, N.Y.: Phelps Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 371

   Johnny Parker is in town. I like Johnny. He's a big shot in pictures and he's a good egg.

   1944, James T[homas] Farrell, To Whom It May Concern: More Stories, Garden City, N.Y.: The Sun Dial Press, →OCLC, page 23

   In contrast, Saito […] was one of the good eggs … He would let us rest whenever the coast was clear and even shared the odd cigarette.

   1997, Brereton Greenhous, “Liberation”, in “C” Force to Hong Kong: A Canadian Catastrophe, 1941–1945 (Canadian War Museum Historical Publication; no. 30), Toronto, Ont.; Oxford: Dundurn Press, →ISBN, page 141

   "And the fifth immortal we know tried to kill you." "He is a bad egg. We stick to good eggs."

   2017 May 26, Dan Shive, El Goonish Shive (webcomic), Comic for Friday, May 26, 2017

   Drogon sniffs Jon [Snow]—and Dany [Daenerys Targaryen] apparently doesn't care enough about Jon's life to get off Drogon so she can witness their interaction on the other side of his fat neck and make sure her son isn't eating his cousin—and seems to sense he's a good egg at the least and quite possibly that he's a Targaryen.

   2017 August 13, Brandon Nowalk, “Oldtown Offers One Last Game-changing Secret as Game Of Thrones Goes behind Enemy Lines (Newbies)”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 04 Dec 2017

   Antonyms: bad egg