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First of all, "idiom" is probably the intended term.
The phrase has been used in different contexts, and evolved, over several centuries. Both "fair" and "middling" (or "middlin'") are terms used to describe various farm products; fruit and other produce, as well as livestock.
Because of similar terms in the cotton grading system, and having grown up in a cotton producing area, it was my long held belief that, like "Middling," "Strict Low Middling," and "Low Middling," there was a cotton grade of "Fair to Middling."
Well, that's just wrong.
Since I use the phrase, and since people sometimes ask me about it, and since -- in ignorance -- I called it a cotton grade, it eventually dawned on me to do some research. In pre-internet times. After searching without success, I made some phone calls and found a guy who had been in the cotton business 40 years. He assured me that there had been no such cotton grade, to the best of his knowledge, and certainly in his recollection.
He's right.
The word "Fair" is not in any way used in the cotton grading system.
That's not to keep someone, in an informal setting, from calling some cotton, or a crop, or the season, "fair to middling." But, the term is not, and never has been, actually connected to cotton in any kind of exclusive way.
So, basically, today, "fair to middling" means that (whatever the subject) could be better, could be worse, but falls somewhere in a possibly broad range approaching indifference or mediocrity.
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The name Justina means "just, righteous, fair." It is of Latin origin. Please see the related link below.
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What is origin of phrase Fair to midland?
The phrase is actually "fair to middling" and some people leave off the final D when pronouncing it, so it sounds like "fair to middlin'". Here is a quote from the Related Link:"All the early examples I can find in literary works - from authors like Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott and Artemus Ward - suggest it became common on the east coast of the US from the 1860s on. The first example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from Artemus Ward: His Travels of 1865: "The men are fair to middling". Another is from Horace Greeley's Recollections of a Busy Life of 1869 in which he records seeing a play: "The night was intensely cold, in-doors as well as out; the house was thin; the playing from fair to middling; yet I was in raptures from first to last". Hunting around, I've found an example three decades earlier, from an article with the title A Succinct Account of the Sandwich Islands, in the July 1837 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger of Richmond, Virginia: "A Dinner on the Plains, Tuesday, September 20th. - This was given 'at the country seat' of J. C. Jones, Esq. to the officers of the Peacock and Enterprise. The viands were 'from fair to middling, we wish we could say more.' " So the phrase is American, most probably early nineteenth century. But where does it come from? There's a clue in one of the OED's later citations, from the Century Dictionary of 1889: "Fair to middling, moderately good: a term designating a specific grade of quality in the market". The term middling turns out to have been used as far back as the previous century for an intermediate grade of various kinds of goods, both in the US and in Britain - there are references to a middling grade of flour or meal, pins, cotton, and other commodities."
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Cowboys loved a colorful phrase! This meant feeling pretty good. You weren't great, but you weren't awful either.
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"Fair to middling" means that (whatever the subject) could be better, could be worse, but falls somewhere in a possibly broad range approaching indifference or mediocrity.
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The weather wasn't particularly good nor bad; it was mostly fair to middling.
What city or country of origin of the surname Bel?
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