good willer

good willer (plural good willers)

1. One who wishes someone well, or means kindly toward someone.

   Synonyms: well-willer, well-wisher

   Antonyms: evil willer, ill-willer

   • 1548, Edward Hall, The Vnion of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre [and] Yorke, London: Richard Grafton, “The trobleous season of Kyng Henry the sixt,” The .xxxv. yere, p. 171,

     […] if these noble men admonished by their frendes, had not sodaynly departed, their lyfes threde had bene broken, and their mortall fate had them ensued, but by secrete admonicion of their good willers (to whome no earthly treasure is comparable) they auoided this net, and narowly escaped the snare,

   • 1625, Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, London: Henry Fetherstone, Part 1, “Navigations and voyages of English-men alongst the coasts of Africa,” Book 3, Chapter 4, § 6, p. 184,

     […] because their Masters were no great good willers to the King, the Protectour in the Kings Name sent the Executioner to put them to death, with a Guard of Pikes.

   • 1696, Jane Leade, A Fountain of Gardens Watered by the Rivers of Divine Pleasure, London: J. Bradford, [Preface], p. 16,

     So now I shall conclude, requesting you as you shall draw in any Light, or feel any Refreshment herefrom, that you would join with me in Acclamations and Praises to the Antient of Days, who hath put into the Hands of a Good-willer to these Divine Mysteries, to bring forth into the Publick, what might otherwise have been left in Oblivion and Secresie.

   • 1950, George E. Allen, chapter 14, in Presidents Who Have Known Me‎, New York: Simon and Schuster, page 193:

     For all his disillusionments about men, and particularly politicians, Barkley is still deeply devoted to many causes sponsored by good-willers of all kinds. He is an ardent supporter of Truman’s civil-rights program, for example.

   • 1969, Leonard Woolf, chapter 2, in The Journey Not the Arrival Matters: An Autobiography of the Years 1939-1969‎, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, page 120:

     I have never known anyone more profoundly and universally a person of good-will than she [i.e. Pippa Strachey] was, but she was entirely without the congenital vice of so many good-willers—sentimentality.