Fare

How to spell fare

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fare

What does fare mean?

1. nounThe price a passenger pays to travel by bus, train, taxi, plane, or other transport.
2. verbTo get along or perform in a particular way over time.
3. nounThe kind of food and drink offered, especially at a meal or establishment.

Fare in a sentence

• noun

  The bus fare went up by fifty pence this month.

• verb

  Small shops often fare badly when a supermarket opens nearby.

• noun

  The pub serves simple fare such as pies and soup.

• noun

  She topped up her travel card to cover the train fare.

• verb

  Older laptops tend to fare poorly under modern software.

• noun

  The cafe is known for hearty vegetarian fare.

Where does fare come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English verb 'faran', meaning 'to travel, journey, or go', a thoroughly native Germanic word with cousins in Old Norse 'fara' and modern German 'fahren', 'to drive or travel'. The original sense was simply the act of going on a journey, and that idea survives in compounds like 'wayfarer', 'seafaring', and 'thoroughfare'. Over time the noun came to mean the cost of a journey, the money a traveller pays to be carried, which is now its commonest use. A separate branch took the sense of 'how a journey or venture turns out', giving the verb meaning 'to get on or manage', as in faring well or badly, and from the medieval idea of provisions taken on a journey it also came to mean food set out for eating. Because it sounds exactly like 'fair', writers often reach for the wrong spelling; remembering its travelling root helps keep 'fare' tied to journeys, costs, and getting along.

How the word is built

• fare (from Old English faran: to travel, journey), the travel-cost noun developing from the sense 'a journey one pays for'

Words that sound like fare

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

• fair: Treating people equally and according to the rules, without favouritism or cheating.