of one's word

of one's word

1. That keeps promises and tells the truth.
   • 1995, Mukul Kesavan, Looking Through Glass, →ISBN, page 1:

     She never needed to show them to us — we knew, just as the adults did, that Dadi was a woman of her word.

   • 2012, Carolyn Robinson Sommers, Betrayed by Destiny, →ISBN, page 143:

     Dean is a great guy and is always helping someone. He is a man of his word, very respectable, and highly intelligent. But he is not the kind of man you would want to cross if you know what I mean.

The phrase is only used immediately following a common noun (usually man, woman or person), which then cannot have a definite determiner such as the or this.

• good as one's word