Meanings
alternative fair-to-middling · alternative fair to middlin' · alternative fair to meddling
- idiomaticnot comparableusually hyphenated when placed before nounOnly tolerably good; somewhat favorable.
Not a heluva good one, but fair to middlin’.
1911, Peter B. Kyne, chapter 29, in Captain Scraggs or The Green-Pea Pirates2 more examples
"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 ScienceFor the next five months, Knicks fans will have to watch a collection of underachievers, inexperienced players and fair-to-middling pros attempt to be respectable.
2009 November 20, William C. Rhoden, “Sports of The Times: Iverson Isn’t the Answer for Knicks”, in New York Times, retrieved 20 Dec 2011
Synonyms & antonyms
More synonyms by meaning
adjectiveabout average; acceptable
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
From the practice of classifying agricultural commodities as fair or middling. The earliest attested instance of these descriptions being combined into the phrase fair to middling was in a British publication of 1822 but the first instance of this usage being generalised is from an American publication of 1837
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
fair to middling. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fair%20to%20middling
“fair to middling.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fair%20to%20middling. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “fair to middling,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fair%20to%20middling.
Source: fair to middling on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.