Word.ws English Dictionary

fair

UK/ˈfɛə/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/ˈfɛː/

fair adjective: beautiful, of a pleasing appearance, with a pure and fresh quality.

Adjective

fair (comparative fairer, superlative fairest)

  1. (archaic, literary, original sense) Beautiful, of a pleasing appearance, with a pure and fresh quality.
    • Monday's child is fair of face.
    • There was once a knight who wooed a fair young maid.
    Synonyms:
    beautiful, pretty, lovely
  2. Unblemished (figuratively or literally); clean and pure; innocent.
    • one's fair name
    • After scratching out and replacing various words in the manuscript, he scribed a fair copy to send to the publisher.
    Synonyms:
    pure, clean, neat
  3. Light in color, pale, particularly with regard to skin tone but also referring to blond and red hair.
    • She had fair hair and blue eyes.
    • the northern people large and fair-complexioned1677, Matthew Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature, page 200
    Synonyms:
    pale
    Antonyms:
    swarthy
  4. Just.
    • He must be given a fair trial.
    • “[…] 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.”1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  5. Adequate, reasonable, or decent, but not excellent.
    • Their performance has been only fair.
    • The patient was in a fair condition after some treatment.
    Synonyms:
    OK, okay
  6. Favorable to a ship's course.
    • 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; […]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...
  7. Favorable, pleasant.
    • The weather was fair today.
    1. Not overcast; cloudless; clear.
      • a fair sky
      • 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.1909, Frank R. Stockton, The adventures of Captain Horn, Chapter 42
    2. Free from obstacles or hindrances; unobstructed; unencumbered; open; direct; said of a road, passage, etc.
      • a fair mark; in fair sight; a fair view
      • The caliphs obtained a mighty empire, which was in a fair way to have enlarged.c. 1610?, Walter Raleigh, A Discourse of War
  8. Without sudden change of direction or curvature; smooth; flowing; said of the figure of a vessel, and of surfaces, water lines, and other lines.
  9. Between the baselines.
  10. Taken direct from an opponent's foot, without the ball touching the ground or another player.
  11. Not a no ball.
  12. 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.

Noun (1)

fair (plural fair)

  1. Something which is fair (in various senses of the adjective).
    • When will we learn to distinguish between the fair and the foul?
  2. (obsolete) A woman, a member of the ‘fair sex’; also as a collective singular, women.
    • Love and Hymen, hand in hand,
      Come, restore the nuptial band!
      And sincere delights prepare
      To crown the hero and the fair.1744, Georg Friedrich Händel, Hercules, act 2, scene 8
    • 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.”1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC
  3. (obsolete) Fairness, beauty.
    • My decayed fairc. 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...
  4. A fair woman; a sweetheart.
    • I have found out a gift for my fair.1743, William Shenstone, A Pastoral Ballad
  5. (obsolete) Good fortune; good luck.
    • Now, fair befall thee, good Petruchio!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]...

Verb

fair (third-person singular simple present fairs, present participle fairing, simple past and past participle faired)

  1. (transitive) To smoothen or even a surface (especially a connection or junction on a surface).
  2. (transitive) To bring into perfect alignment (especially about rivet holes when connecting structural members).
  3. (transitive) To make an animation smooth, removing any jerkiness.
    • 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.1996, Computer Animation '96: June 3-4, 1996, Geneva, Switzerland, page 136
  4. (transitive) To construct or design with the aim of producing a smooth outline or reducing air drag or water resistance.
    • 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.1920, Technical Report of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, page 206
    Synonyms:
    to streamline
  5. (obsolete, transitive) To make fair or beautiful.
    • Fairing the foul with art’s false borrow’d face1609, 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
  6. (intransitive) To become fair (favorable, not stormy).
    • [The] weather faired, and toward midday we were again facing the fringe of breakers from the cliffs.1891, Percival Lowell, Noto: An Unexplored Corner of Japan, IndyPublish.com, page 211
    • ... 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.1929, James Frank Dobie, A Vaquero of the Brush Country, page 88

Adverb

fair (comparative more fair or fairer, superlative most fair or fairest)

  1. Clearly, openly, frankly, civilly, honestly, favorably, auspiciously, agreeably.
  2. (Ireland) Almost; to a great extent but not literally.
    • "I'm fair moidered to know what to do wid him," she confessed to the rosy-cheeked Bridget one day.1913, James Johnston Abraham, The Night Nurse
    • "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 June 1, Dorothy Mitchell, Hollybeck, Chipmunkapublishing ltd, →ISBN, page 7

Noun (2)

fair (plural fairs)

  1. A community gathering to celebrate and exhibit local achievements.
  2. An event for public entertainment and trade, a market.
    • 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...1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  3. An event for professionals in a trade to learn of new products and do business, a trade fair.
  4. A travelling amusement park (called a funfair in British English and a (travelling) carnival in US English).
    • The whole town was at the fair, young and old, rich and poor.

Noun (3) capitalized: FAIR

FAIR (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, acronym, data management) Acronym of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability, a set of principles for data management.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: FAIR

FAIR

  1. (US, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Federation for American Immigration Reform.
    • While there is no official definition of sanctuaries, FAIR counted any jurisdiction that bans police or other officials from asking about immigration status, forbids communication with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or refuses to hold likely deportees for pickup by ICE.2018 May 10, Stephen Dinan, “Half of all Americans now live in ‘sanctuaries’ protecting immigrants”, in The Washington Times
  2. (abbreviation, acronym, artificial intelligence) Acronym of Facebook AI Research.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Fair

Fair

  1. A surname.

fair meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

fair in Hindi

celebration
मेला melā
market
मेला melā

fair in Marathi

celebration
मेळा meḷā

fair in Urdu

market
میلَہ mela

fair in Bengali

market
মেলা mela
More languagesFewer languages
fair in Malayalam
മേളം mēḷaṁ
fair in Arabic
أَشْقَر ʔašqar, حَقَّانِيّ ḥaqqāniyy, عادِل ʕādil, عَدْل ʕadl
fair in Malay
adil
fair in Persian
روشن rowšan
fair in Thai
เป็นธรรม bpen-tam, แฟร์ fɛɛ
fair in Vietnamese
công bằng, hội chợ

Examples of fair in a sentence

  • That the ſonnes of God ſaw the daughters of men, that they were faire, and they took them wiues, of all which they choſe.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 6:2, column 1:
  • 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.1605, “The order for the administration of the Lords Supper, or holy Communion”, in The Booke of Common Prayer, and Administration of the...
  • In complexion fair, and with blue or gray eyes, he was tall as any Viking, as broad in the shoulder.1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
  • Clams was fairly scarce over that side of the bay and ought to fetch a fair price.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter III, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

All 40 example sentences with fair

Synonyms of fair

3 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of fair

Forms of fair

Adjective
comparativefairer
superlativefairest
alternative form (obsolete)faire
Noun
pluralfair
pluralfairs
Verb
third-person singular presentfairs
present participlefairing
past participlefaired
pastfaired
Adverb
comparativemore fair
comparativefairer
superlativemost fair
superlativefairest

Plural of fair: fair

Origin of fair

From Middle English fayr, from Old English fæġer (“beautiful”), from Proto-West Germanic *fagr, from Proto-Germanic *fagraz (“appropriate, fitting, nice, suitable”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂ḱ- (“to attach, join; agreement, settlement”). Cognates Cognate with Old High German and Old Saxon fagar (“beautiful, fair”), Danish fager, favr (“fair, pretty, wonderful”), Faroese and Icelandic fagur (“beautiful, fair”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish fager (“fair, pretty”), Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐌲𐍂𐍃 (fagrs, “fair, proper”), Estonian vapper (“brave, courageous”), Finnish vauras (“substantial, wealthy”); also Latin pāx (“peace; ease, quiet, rest”), Umbrian pase (“peace”), Belarusian пе́кны (pjékny, “beautiful”), Czech pěkný (“nice; pretty”), Polish piekny, piękny (“beautiful; admirable, praiseworthy”), Slovak pekný (“nice; pretty”), Sanskrit पाश॑ (pā́śa, “bond, cord, noose; nature, outer world; border, edge, selvage”). See also peace.

From Middle English feyre, from Old French foire, from Latin fēriae.

Words formed from fair

Phrases with fair

89 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with fair

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about fair

What does fair mean?
Fair means beautiful, of a pleasing appearance, with a pure and fresh quality.
What is fair in Hindi?
Fair in Hindi is मेला (melā). See Fair meaning in Hindi.
How do you use fair in a sentence?
That the ſonnes of God ſaw the daughters of men, that they were faire, and they took them wiues, of all which they choſe.
What part of speech is fair?
Fair can be an adjective, a noun, a verb or an adverb.
How do you pronounce fair?
Fair is pronounced /ˈfɛə/ (UK).

Words near fair in the dictionary

  1. Fainuaadhanuhuraa
  2. fainéant
  3. fainéants
  4. faipule
  5. faipules
  6. fair
  7. fair and square
  8. fair as the day
  9. fair ball
  10. fair balls
  11. fair bet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fair (page history and authors); FAIR (page history and authors); 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-fair.ogg.

Cite this entry: “fair.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fair. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.