make good

make good (third-person singular simple present makes good, present participle making good, simple past and past participle made good)

1. To achieve substantial success in life, often in business.
   • 1925, Gilbert K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America‎^[1], page 94:

     America does vaguely feel a man making good as something analogous to a man being good or a man doing good.

   • 1980 August 16, Karen Franklin, “Not Too Distant”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 5, page 4:

     Some of the Cubans who come to this country hoping to make good may be in for a shock. Would those 1,400 Cuban exiles already locked up have left Cuba — where jobs, education and health care are available to all, and where no laws against homosexuality exist — had they known they would end up in U.S. federal prisons, isolated from other prisoners and without benefit of trial?

   • 2007, Michael Eric Dyson, Know What I Mean?: Reflections on Hip-Hop‎^[2]:

     The moment DJay becomes a rapper, the moment he becomes an artist, is linked to his own understanding of what hip hop was about when Skinny Black, his idol, a local homeboy who made good as a rapper, was “blowing up."

   • 2012, Robert Wuthnow, Red State Religion: Faith and Politics in America's Heartland‎^[3], page 200:

     He [Eisenhower] was their own, the boy who made good.

2. (often with "on") To complete successfully; to fulfil (a promise).

   He made good his escape by jumping from a second-story window.

   • 1996, Eugene Nelson White, Stock Market Crashes and Speculative Manias, page 225:

     The Bank of the Commonwealth suspension resulted from overcertifying the checks of its former president, Edward Haight, to the amount of $225,000, of which Mr. Haight could only make good $60,000.

3. (gambling) To match the first player's bet with one's own, rather than dropping out.
   • 1885, William Brisbane Dick, The American Hoyle: Or, Gentleman's Hand-book of Games:

     After all the players who determine to go in have made good the bet of the player who opened the Jack Pot, and the hands have been filled […]

4. To remedy or compensate for (a defect or deficiency).

   The company made good the damage by paying my repair costs.

   • 1944 March and April, “The Western Desert Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 73:

     By a remarkable piece of railway reconstruction work on the part of the Allied Forces—mainly South African railway construction troops—mines laid along the track by the retreating enemy were removed by sappers, and the German damage made good, within 7 days.

5. To make (a surface) level or even.
   • 2005, Roy Hughes, Painting and Decorating‎^[4], page 44:

     […] the only action that will be required prior to decoration will be to wash down, make good and apply a fresh paint system.

• make good on