Word.ws English Dictionary

fair-to-middling

fair-to-middling is the alternative form of fair to middling.

Meaning of fair to middling

Adjective

fair to middling (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic, usually hyphenated when placed before noun) Only tolerably good; somewhat favorable.
    • "O'er Waiting Harpstrings of the Mind" is pretty good, quite fair to middling—the whole seven of the stanzas—but repetition would be certain to take the excitement out of it in the course of time.1907, Mark Twain, chapter 7, in Christian Science
    Synonyms:
    adequate, OK, tolerable

Questions about fair-to-middling

What is fair-to-middling the alternative form of?
Fair-to-middling is the alternative form of fair to middling.

Words near fair-to-middling in the dictionary

  1. fair-mindedness
  2. fair-sized
  3. fair-skinned
  4. fair-spoken
  5. fair-to-middlin'
  6. fair-to-middling
  7. fair-weather
  8. fair-weather fan
  9. fair-weather fans
  10. fair-weather friend
  11. fair-weather friends

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fair-to-middling (page history and authors); fair to middling (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.

Last updated:

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