Meaning & use
good old days
Last updated
Meaning
nounpluralinformal
A past period that someone remembers as happier or simpler than the present.
Grammar: Always plural and normally used with 'the': remember the good old days.
Patterns
- the good old days
- remember the good old days
- back in the good old days
- long for the good old days
My grandfather loves talking about the good old days.
Back in the good old days, people wrote letters by hand.
She sighs for the good old days when the shop was full.
Common combinations
- remember the good old days
- They sat around remembering the good old days.
- back in the good old days
- Back in the good old days, we had no smartphones.
- long for the good old days
- Some voters long for the good old days.
- the good old days of something
- He misses the good old days of live radio.
Synonyms and how they differ
- the past
- Neutral and factual; 'the good old days' adds warm, nostalgic feeling and is slightly informal.
- yesteryear
- A literary word for the past; it sounds more poetic and less conversational than 'the good old days'.
Word family
Commonly confused: good old days or old days?
good old days vs old days
Without 'good', this just means an earlier period; the phrase 'the good old days' specifically suggests that period was better.
Practice
My uncle often talks about ______ good old days when he was young.
Choose one answer.
This fixed phrase almost always takes 'the': 'the good old days'. 'A' fails because the phrase refers to a definite remembered period, not one of many.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “good old days”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.