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fair
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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English
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /fɛə/, /fɛː/
- (General American) IPA(key): /fɛɚ/
Audio (General American): (file) Audio (General American): (file) - (General Australian) IPA(key): /feː/
- (New Zealand, without the cheer–chair merger) IPA(key): /feə/
- (New Zealand, cheer–chair merger) IPA(key): /fiə/
- (Scotland) IPA(key): /feɹ/
- (Lancashire, fair–fur merger) IPA(key): /fɜː(ɹ)/
- Homophones: fare, fear (cheer–chair merger), fir (fair–fur merger), fur (fair–fur merger)
- Rhymes: -ɛə(ɹ)
Etymology 1
From Middle English fayr, feir, fager, from Old English fæġer (“beautiful”), from Proto-West Germanic *fagr, from Proto-Germanic *fagraz (“suitable, fitting, nice”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂ḱ- (“to fasten, place”).
Cognate with Scots fayr, fare (“fair”), Danish feir, faver, fager (“fair, pretty”), Norwegian fager (“fair, pretty”), Swedish fager (“fair, pretty”), Icelandic fagur (“beautiful, fair”), Umbrian pacer (“gracious, merciful, kind”), Slovak pekný (“good-looking, handsome, nice”). See also peace.
Adjective
fair (comparative fairer, superlative fairest)
- (original sense, archaic or literary) Beautiful, of a pleasing appearance, with a pure and fresh quality.
- Synonyms: beautiful, pretty, lovely
- Monday's child is fair of face.
- There was once a knight who wooed a fair young maid.
- 15th c., “[The Creation]”, in Wakefield Mystery Plays; Re-edited in George England, Alfred W. Pollard, editors, The Towneley Plays (Early English Text Society Extra Series; LXXI), London: […] Oxford University Press, 1897, →OCLC, page 5, lines 120–121:
- He is so fayre, withoutten les, / he semys full well to sytt on des.
- He is so fair, without any limit; his appearance shows well when he sits on the dais.
- 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 6:2, column 1:
- That the ſonnes of God ſaw the daughters of men, that they were faire, and they took them wiues, of all which they choſe.
- 1912 February–July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Under the Moons of Mars”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as “Champion and Chief”, in A Princess of Mars, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., 1917 October, →OCLC, page 96:
- "It was a purely scientific research party sent out by my father's father, the Jeddak of Helium, to rechart the air currents, and to take atmospheric density tests," replied the fair prisoner, in a low, well-modulated voice.
- 2010, Stephan Grundy, Beowulf (Fiction), iUniverse, →ISBN, page 33:
- And yet he was also, though many generations separated them, distant cousin to the shining eoten-main Geard, whom the god Frea Ing had seen from afar and wedded; and to Scatha, the fair daughter of the old thurse Theasa, who had claimed a husband from among the gods as weregild for her father's slaying: often, it was said, the ugliest eotens would sire the fairest maids.
- Unblemished (figuratively or literally); clean and pure; innocent.
- Synonyms: pure, clean, neat
- one's fair name
- After scratching out and replacing various words in the manuscript, he scribed a fair copy to send to the publisher.
- 1605, “The order for the administration of the Lords Supper, or holy Communion”, in The Booke of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, London: Robert Barker:
- The Table hauing at the Communion time a faire white linnen cloth vpon it, shall stand in the body of the Church, or in the Chancell, where Morning prayer and Euening prayer be appointed to be said.
- 1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia, London, Observation 21, “Of Moss, and several other small vegetative Substances,” p. 135,
- […] I have observ’d, that putting fair Water (whether Rain-water or Pump-water, or May-dew, or Snow-water, it was almost all one) I have often observ’d, I say, that this Water would, with a little standing, tarnish and cover all about the sides of the Glass that lay under water, with a lovely green […]
- Light in color, pale, particularly with regard to skin tone but also referring to blond and red hair.
- 1677, Matthew Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature, page 200:
- the northern people large and fair-complexioned
- 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
- This new-comer was a man who in any company would have seemed striking. In complexion fair, and with blue or gray eyes, he was tall as any Viking, as broad in the shoulder.
- Just.
- 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
- “[…] it is not fair of you to bring against mankind double weapons ! Dangerous enough you are as woman alone, without bringing to your aid those gifts of mind suited to problems which men have been accustomed to arrogate to themselves.”
- Adequate, reasonable, or decent, but not excellent.
- Synonyms: OK, okay
- Their performance has been only fair.
- The patient was in a fair condition after some treatment.
- 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter III, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
- My hopes wa'n't disappointed. I never saw clams thicker than they was along them inshore flats. I filled my dreener in no time, and then it come to me that 'twouldn't be a bad idee to get a lot more, take 'em with me to Wellmouth, and peddle 'em out. Clams was fairly scarce over that side of the bay and ought to fetch a fair price.
- 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC:
- The words of these songs were either without meaning, or derived from an idiom with which Watt, a very fair linguist, had no acquaintance.
- (nautical, of a wind) Favorable to a ship's course.
- 1885–1888, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl. and editor, “Night 563”, in A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night […], Shammar edition, volume (please specify the volume), [London]: […] Burton Club […], →OCLC:
- I shipped with them and becoming friends, we set forth on our venture, in health and safety; and sailed with a fair wind, till we came to a city called Madínat-al-Sín; […]
- Favorable, pleasant.
- The weather was fair today.
- Not overcast; cloudless; clear.
- a fair sky
- 1909, Frank R. Stockton, The adventures of Captain Horn, Chapter 42:
- They had good weather and tolerably fair winds, and before they entered the Straits of Magellan the captain had formulated a plan for the disposition of Garta.
- Free from obstacles or hindrances; unobstructed; unencumbered; open; direct; said of a road, passage, etc.
- a fair mark; in fair sight; a fair view
- c. 1610?, Walter Raleigh, A Discourse of War:
- The caliphs obtained a mighty empire, which was in a fair way to have enlarged.
- (shipbuilding) Without sudden change of direction or curvature; smooth; flowing; said of the figure of a vessel, and of surfaces, water lines, and other lines.
- (baseball) Between the baselines.
- (rugby, of a catch) Taken direct from an opponent's foot, without the ball touching the ground or another player.
- (cricket, of a ball delivered by the bowler) Not a no ball.
- (statistics) Of a coin or die, having equal chance of landing on any side, unbiased.
- A fair coin has a 50% chance of landing on heads.
Derived terms
- a fair bit
- a fair booty makes many a thief
- a fair few
- all's fair in love and war
- by fair means or foul
- culture-fair
- everything is fair in love and war
- faint heart never won fair lady
- fair and square
- fair as the day
- fair ball
- Fairbank
- Fairbanks
- fair bet
- fair-built
- fair cake-cutting
- fair catch
- fair coin
- fair comment
- fair cop
- fair copy
- fair crack of the whip
- fair dealing
- fair dinks
- fair dinkum
- fair division
- fair doos
- fair dos
- fair do's
- fair enough
- fair exchange is no robbery
- fair fucks
- fair game
- fair go
- fair-haired
- fairhanded
- Fairhaven
- Fairhead
- Fair Head
- fairheaded, fair-headed
- fairhood
- fair is fair
- fairish
- Fair Isle
- Fair Lawn
- fairlead
- fairleader
- fair leather
- fair linen
- fair list
- fairmaid
- fair-maid-of-France
- fair maids of France
- fair-mannered
- fair market value
- fair-minded
- fairness
- Fair Oaks
- fair penny
- fair play
- fair sex
- fair's fair
- fair shake
- fair shake of the sauce bottle
- fair share
- fair-sized
- fair-skinned
- fairsome
- fair-spoken
- fair suck of the pineapple
- fair suck of the sauce bottle
- fair suck of the sauce stick
- fair suck of the sav
- fair to meddling
- fair-to-middlin'
- fair to middlin'
- fair to middling
- fair-to-middling
- fair trade
- fair trial
- fair use
- fair value
- fair warning
- fairwater
- fairway
- fair-weather
- fair weather fan
- fair-weather friend
- fair weather friend
- fair-weather friendship
- fair wind
- fancy fair
- hyperfair
- make fair weather
- money and fair words
- no fair
- North Fair Oaks
- play fair
- set-fair
- set fair
- snout-fair
- superfair
- to be fair
- turnabout is fair play
- turn about is fair play
- you can't say fairer than that
Descendants
Translations
pretty or attractive
|
unblemished and innocent
|
light in color or pale
|
just, equitable
|
adequate, reasonable, decent
|
nautical: favorable to a ship's course
not overcast or raining of weather
baseball: between the baselines
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
|
Noun
fair (plural fair)
- Something which is fair (in various senses of the adjective).
- When will we learn to distinguish between the fair and the foul?
- (obsolete) A woman, a member of the ‘fair sex’; also as a collective singular, women.
- 1744, Georg Friedrich Händel, Hercules, act 2, scene 8:
- Love and Hymen, hand in hand,
Come, restore the nuptial band!
And sincere delights prepare
To crown the hero and the fair.
- 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC:
- Here Jones, having ordered a servant to show a room above stairs, was ascending, when the dishevelled fair, hastily following, was laid hold on by the master of the house, who cried, “Heyday, where is that beggar wench going? Stay below stairs, I desire you.”
- 1821 August 8, [Lord Byron], Don Juan, Cantos III, IV, and V, London: […] Thomas Davison, […], →OCLC, canto III, stanza 24:
- If single, probably his plighted Fair
Has in his absence wedded some rich miser […].
- (obsolete) Fairness, beauty.
- c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:
- My decayed fair
- A fair woman; a sweetheart.
- 1743, William Shenstone, A Pastoral Ballad:
- I have found out a gift for my fair.
- (obsolete) Good fortune; good luck.
- c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]:
- Now, fair befall thee, good Petruchio!
Verb
fair (third-person singular simple present fairs, present participle fairing, simple past and past participle faired)
- (transitive) To smoothen or even a surface (especially a connection or junction on a surface).
- (transitive) To bring into perfect alignment (especially about rivet holes when connecting structural members).
- (transitive, art) To make an animation smooth, removing any jerkiness.
- 1996, Computer Animation '96: June 3-4, 1996, Geneva, Switzerland, page 136:
- Since the sequence of data contain sampling noises, the captured motion is not smooth and wiggles along the moving path. There are well-known fairing algorithms in Euclidean space based on difference geometry.
- (transitive) To construct or design with the aim of producing a smooth outline or reducing air drag or water resistance.
- 1920, Technical Report of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, page 206:
- Two forward cars were provided with the model. One of these (shown detached in Fig. 1) was faired at its after end, with a view to possible reduction of head resistance, and to induce a better flow of air to the propeller.
- (transitive, obsolete) To make fair or beautiful.
- 1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 127”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC:
- Fairing the foul with art’s false borrow’d face
- (intransitive, of weather) To become fair (favorable, not stormy).
- 1891, Percival Lowell, Noto: An Unexplored Corner of Japan, IndyPublish.com, page 211:
- [The] weather faired, and toward midday we were again facing the fringe of breakers from the cliffs.
- 1929, James Frank Dobie, A Vaquero of the Brush Country, page 88:
- ... weather "faired off" next morning, and we were not a bit sorry to mark time for a couple of days while the water went down.
- 1992 05, Wallace O. Chariton, Charlie Eckhardt, Kevin Young, Unsolved Texas Mysteries, Taylor Trade Publications, →ISBN, page 205:
- ... weather faired up but there was no thought of delay; it was time for Texas to move forward and form a new, independent government. In an effort to combat the frigid conditions, the delegates nailed thin pieces of cloth over the […]
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:fair.
Synonyms
- (to reduce air drag or water resistance): to streamline
Derived terms
Translations
to bring into perfect alignment
to produce a smooth outline
|
Adverb
fair (comparative more fair or fairer, superlative most fair or fairest)
- Clearly, openly, frankly, civilly, honestly, favorably, auspiciously, agreeably.
- (Ireland) Almost; to a great extent but not literally.
- 1913, James Johnston Abraham, The Night Nurse:
- "I'm fair moidered to know what to do wid him," she confessed to the rosy-cheeked Bridget one day.
- 2011 June 1, Dorothy Mitchell, Hollybeck, Chipmunkapublishing ltd, →ISBN, page 7:
- "I just want to get me blasted boots off and soak me poor feet, they're fair killing me, what with chilblains and corns, me toes are fair screaming."
- 2011 September 5, Mary Hooper, Velvet, A&C Black, →ISBN, page 67:
- "We were at Egyptian Hall last night and the poor lady was overwhelmed with messages - they fair exhausted her."
Derived terms
Etymology 2
From Middle English feyre, from Old French foire, from Latin fēriae.
Noun
fair (plural fairs)
- A community gathering to celebrate and exhibit local achievements.
- An event for public entertainment and trade, a market.
- 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
- The turmoil went on—no rest, no peace. […] It was nearly eleven o'clock now, and he strolled out again. In the little fair created by the costers' barrows the evening only seemed beginning; and the naphtha flares made one's eyes ache, the men's voices grated harshly, and the girls' faces saddened one.
- An event for professionals in a trade to learn of new products and do business, a trade fair.
- A travelling amusement park (called a funfair in British English and a (travelling) carnival in US English).
Derived terms
- a day after the fair
- book fair
- boot fair
- career fair, careers fair
- cattle fair
- county fair
- fairdom
- fairgoer
- fairgoing
- fairground
- fairlike
- fairling
- fairtime
- frost fair
- funfair
- geography fair
- horn fair
- horse fair
- job fair
- Mayfair
- Ren fair, Renaissance fair
- resource fair
- ride the fair
- science fair
- state fair, State Fair
- statute fair
- Vanity Fair
- village fair
- world's fair
Translations
celebration
|
market
|
professional event, trade fair
|
a travelling amusement park
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
References
- “fair”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- fair in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
- William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “fair”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
Anagrams
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Dutch
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
Borrowed from English fair, from Middle English fayr, from Old English fæġer, from Proto-West Germanic *fagr, from Proto-Germanic *fagraz.
Adjective
fair (comparative fairder, superlative fairst)
Declension
Etymology 2
Borrowed from English fair, from Middle English feyre, from Old French foire, from Latin fēriae.
Noun
fair m (plural fairs, no diminutive)
Related terms
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German
Etymology
Borrowed from English fair, from Old English fæġer, from Proto-West Germanic *fagr, from Proto-Germanic *fagraz, whence also Middle High German vager (“splendid, wonderful”).
Pronunciation
Adjective
fair (strong nominative masculine singular fairer, comparative fairer, superlative am fairsten)
- (especially sports) fair (just, honest, equitable, adequate)
- Synonyms: anständig, ehrlich, gerecht, gleich, ausgeglichen, angemessen, sauber
- Antonym: unfair
- ein faires Spiel ― an honest game, a fairly played game
- Unsere einzige Möglichkeit, fair zu sein, besteht darin, alle gleich schlecht zu behandeln.
- The only way we can be fair is by treating everybody equally badly.
Declension
Positive forms of fair
Comparative forms of fair
Superlative forms of fair
Derived terms
Further reading
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Haitian Creole
Etymology
Verb
fair
- (Saint-Domingue) to do
- Ly doi fair nion l'autre quichoy avant cila là. ― He should do another thing before that one.
Descendants
- Haitian Creole: fè
References
- S.J Ducoeurjoly, Manuel des habitans de Saint-Domingue, contenant un précis de l'histoire de cette île
Hungarian
Etymology
Pronunciation
Adjective
fair (comparative fairebb, superlative legfairebb)
- fair (just, equitable)
- Synonyms: méltányos, tisztességes, becsületes, igazságos, korrekt, sportszerű
Declension
Derived terms
- fairség
- fairül
Related terms
Further reading
- fair in Géza Bárczi, László Országh, et al., editors, A magyar nyelv értelmező szótára [The Explanatory Dictionary of the Hungarian Language] (ÉrtSz.), Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1959–1962. Fifth ed., 1992: →ISBN.
- fair in Nóra Ittzés, editor, A magyar nyelv nagyszótára [A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Hungarian Language] (Nszt.), Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2006–2031 (work in progress; published a–ez as of 2024).
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Irish
Etymology
See aire (“watching, attention”)
Pronunciation
Verb
fair (present analytic faireann, future analytic fairfidh, verbal noun faire, past participle fairthe)
- to watch
Conjugation
* indirect relative
† archaic or dialect form
‡ dependent form
‡‡ dependent form used with particles that trigger eclipsis
Mutation
Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in standard Modern Irish.
All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.
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Old Irish
Alternative forms
Pronunciation
Pronoun
fair
Polish
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from English fair.
Pronunciation
Adjective
fair (not comparable, no derived adverb)
Declension
Indeclinable.
Adverb
fair (not comparable)
Related terms
noun
Further reading
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