Word.ws English Dictionary

bid fair

bid fair verb: to have a reasonable claim; to seem likely.

Verb

bid fair (third-person singular simple present bids fair, present participle bidding fair, simple past bade fair, past participle bidden fair)

  1. (usually) To have a reasonable claim; to seem likely.
    • A number of the phrases current in St. Giles's Greek bid fair to become legitimatised in the dictionary of this colony: plant, swag, pulling up, and other epithets of the Tom and Jerry school, are established — […]1828, Peter Miller Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales, page 52
    • Diggle Station lies high up in the Pennine Chain, subject to extreme low temperatures. With this and heavy snowfall in the winter months, Diggle bids fair to compete with the Scottish lines under similar weather conditions, and the provision of unfrozen water in the higher ambient temperature of...1959 February, “Letters to the Editor: Diggle Water Troughs”, in Railway Magazine, page 135

Forms of bid fair

third-person singular presentbids fair
present participlebidding fair
pastbade fair
past participlebidden fair

Questions about bid fair

What does bid fair mean?
Bid fair means to have a reasonable claim; to seem likely.
What part of speech is bid fair?
Bid fair is a verb.
What is the past tense of bid fair?
The past tense of bid fair is bade fair.

Words near bid fair in the dictionary

  1. bid
  2. bid adieu
  3. bid beads
  4. bid defiance to
  5. bid down
  6. bid fair
  7. bid hook
  8. bid hooks
  9. bid in
  10. bid off
  11. bid one's time

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bid fair (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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