Goodwill is friendly feeling, and the willingness to help. A gesture of goodwill, build goodwill, act in goodwill.
In accounting it is a hard number: when one company buys another for more than its assets are worth, the difference is recorded as goodwill on the balance sheet — the value of a name and a customer base. It is written down when the purchase proves disappointing.
1noungoodwillFriendly feeling, and the willingness to help.
“The neighbours showed great goodwill by helping us clear the snow.”
goodwill is a feeling.
Good plus will, recorded in Old English. The accounting sense came from the value of a business's reputation.
Old English
*gōdwille
Middle English
*goodwille
English, today
goodwill
Built from
From Middle English goodwille, from Old English gōdwille. From Middle English goodwille,good wille, possibly from Old English gōdwille (compare gōdwillende (“well-pleased”)). Compare also Scots guidwilly,guidwillie (“displaying goodwill”). by surface analysis, good + will. Cognate with Scots guidwill (“goodwill”), Middle Low German gūtwille (“goodwill”), Old High German guotwilligi (“goodwill”), Old Danish godvilje (“goodwill”), Icelandic góðvilji, góðvili (“goodwill”), Icelandic góðvild (“goodness”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA