Fair

How to spell fair

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fair

What does fair mean?

1. adjectiveTreating people equally and according to the rules, without favouritism or cheating.
2. adjectiveLight in colour, especially of hair or skin.
3. nounA gathering for trade, entertainment, or exhibition, often held outdoors.
4. adjectiveReasonably good but not excellent; moderate in quality or amount.

Fair in a sentence

• adjective

  The manager promised a fair review of every application.

• adjective

  Her fair hair turned almost white in the summer sun.

• noun

  The village held its annual summer fair on the green.

• adjective

  The report gave the restaurant only a fair rating for service.

• adjective

  Workers demanded a fair wage for the extra hours.

• adjective

  People with very fair skin should use stronger sunscreen.

Where does fair come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This little word actually braids together two different histories that happen to be spelled the same way. The adjective fair, meaning attractive, pale, or just, descends from the Old English fæger, which meant beautiful or pleasing to the eye, and it sat among the everyday vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon England well before the Norman Conquest. Over the centuries its meaning fanned out: from physical beauty to light colouring (as in fair hair), to weather that is clear and pleasant, and finally to the moral sense of even-handed and just. The noun fair, meaning a market or festive gathering, is a quite separate arrival, borrowed in the 1300s through Old French feire from the Latin feria, meaning a holiday or feast day, because such gatherings were originally held on religious festival days. Because both words shrank down to the same four letters, modern English keeps them apart only by context. The real spelling trap, though, is the identical-sounding fare, meaning the price of travel, which comes from yet another root entirely.

How the word is built

• fair (from Old English fæger: beautiful, pleasing); the event noun is a separate word from Latin feria: holiday

Words that sound like fair

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• fare: The price a passenger pays to travel by bus, train, taxi, plane, or other transport.