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by fair means or foul

by fair means or foul prepositional phrase: by any means necessary, not excluding dirty tricks.

Prepositional phrase

  1. By any means necessary, not excluding dirty tricks.
    • [Utterson] resumed; "if not by fair means, then by foul—if not of your consent, then by brute force!"1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, page 82

Synonyms of by fair means or foul

Questions about by fair means or foul

What does by fair means or foul mean?
By fair means or foul means by any means necessary, not excluding dirty tricks.
What part of speech is by fair means or foul?
By fair means or foul is a prepositional phrase.

Words near by fair means or foul in the dictionary

  1. by dint of
  2. by ear
  3. by extension
  4. by eye
  5. by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail
  6. by fair means or foul
  7. by far
  8. by far and away
  9. by foot
  10. by gad
  11. by gannies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: by fair means or foul (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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