GOODY.  At Harvard College, a woman who has the care of the students’ rooms.  The word seems to be an abbreviated form of the word goodwife.  It has long been in use, as a low term of civility or sport, and in some cases with the signification of a good old dame; but in the sense above given it is believed to be peculiar to Harvard College.  In early times, sweeper was in use instead of goody, and even now at Yale College the word sweep is retained.  The words bed-maker at Cambridge, Eng., and gyp at Oxford, express the same idea.

The Rebelliad, an epic poem, opens with an invocation to the Goody, as follows.

  Old Goody Muse! on thee I call,
  Pro more, (as do poets all,)
  To string thy fiddle, wax thy bow,
  And scrape a ditty, jig, or so. 
  Now don’t wax wrathy, but excuse
  My calling you old Goody Muse;
  Because “Old Goody” is a name
  Applied to every college dame. 
    Aloft in pendent dignity,
      Astride her magic broom,
    And wrapt in dazzling majesty,
      See! see! the Goody come!—­p. 11.

  Go on, dear Goody! and recite
  The direful mishaps of the fight.—­Ibid., p. 20.

  The Goodies hearing, cease to sweep,
  And listen; while the cook-maids weep.—­Ibid., p. 47.

  The Goody entered with her broom,
  To make his bed and sweep his room.—­Ibid., p. 73.

On opening the papers left to his care, he found a request that his effects might be bestowed on his friend, the Goody, who had been so attentive to him during his declining hours.—­Harvard Register, 1827-28, p. 86.

I was interrupted by a low knock at my door, followed by the entrance of our old Goody, with a bundle of musty papers in her hand, tied round with a soiled red ribbon.—­Collegian, 1830, p. 231.

Were there any Goodies when you were in college, father?  Perhaps you did not call them by that name.  They are nice old ladies (not so very nice, either), who come in every morning, after we have been to prayers, and sweep the rooms, and make the beds, and do all that sort of work.  However, they don’t much like their title, I find; for I called one, the other day, Mrs. Goodie, thinking it was her real name, and she was as sulky as she could be.—­Harvardiana, Vol.  III. p. 76.

  Yet these half-emptied bottles shall I take,
  And, having purged them of this wicked stuff,
  Make a small present unto Goody Bush.
    Ibid., Vol.  III. p. 257.

Reader! wert ever beset by a dun? ducked by the Goody from thine own window, when “creeping like snail unwillingly” to morning prayers?—­Ibid., Vol.  IV. p. 274.

          The crowd delighted
  Saw them, like Goodies, clothed in gowns of satin,
  Of silk or cotton.—­Childe Harvard, p. 26, 1848.