Word.ws English Dictionary

fair and square

fair and square adverb: totally fairly and undoubtedly.

Adverb

fair and square (comparative more fair and square, superlative most fair and square)

  1. Totally fairly and undoubtedly.
    • We won the game fair and square.
  2. Within the applicable rules.
    • He said they give licenses now to steal — steal folks'es senses away, and then they would steal every thing else, and murder, and tear round into every kind of wickedness. But he didn't ask that. He wanted things done fair and square: he jest wanted to steal horses. He was goin' West, and he...1885, Marietta Holley, Sweet Cicely; or, Josiah Allen as a politician, page 177
    • They had crawled in and staked the land and stood ready to shoot those of us who came in, fair and square, in the Run.1930, Edna Ferber, Cimarron, page 23
  3. In all fairness; equitably.
    • "Have it out with him to-night. Fair and square. Out he goes, Edmund, neck and crop. Out, by thunder."1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 76

Adjective

fair and square (not comparable)

  1. Unquestionably fair.
    • “[…] I always liked you Joe, and stood up for you, too. Don’t you remember? You won’t tell, will you Joe?” And the poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid murderer, and clasped his appealing hands. / “No, you’ve always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I won’t go back on...1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter IX, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC, pages 91–92
    • It was a fair and square deal. We won. And we won in the Senate. And it's in the bill. And I didn't think we could beat them, but we did.1995, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, page 1436

fair and square meaning in Tamil and Malayalam

fair and square in Tamil

நேர்மையான

fair and square in Malayalam

fairly, honestly, without cheating
ന്യായമായി, നീത്യാ, നീതിയോടെ, കൃത്യമായി, കണിശമായി, കാപട്യമില്ലാതെ

Examples of fair and square in a sentence

  • He wanted things done fair and square: he jest wanted to steal horses.1885, Marietta Holley, Sweet Cicely; or, Josiah Allen as a politician, page 177:
  • He said, "Of course we should keep the Panama Canal, we stole it fair and square."1976 October 28, Charlie Waters, quoting S. I. Hayakawa, “First biennial Harold Stassen Awards”, in The Prescott Courier:

Forms of fair and square

comparativemore fair and square
superlativemost fair and square

Questions about fair and square

What does fair and square mean?
Fair and square means totally fairly and undoubtedly.
What is fair and square in Tamil?
Fair and square in Tamil is நேர்மையான. See Fair and square meaning in Tamil.
How do you use fair and square in a sentence?
He wanted things done fair and square: he jest wanted to steal horses.
What part of speech is fair and square?
Fair and square can be an adverb or an adjective.

Words near fair and square in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fair and square (page history and authors); fair and square (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); fair and square (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-fair and square.ogg, en-us-fair and square.ogg.

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