fairish
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Etymology: From fair + -ish.
Senses: examples: text: Andrew pays all the farm expenses, but the housekeeping accounts fall to me. I make a fairish amount of pin money on my poultry and some of my preserves that I send to Boston, [...]
ref: 1917, Christopher Morley, chapter 3, in Parnassus on Wheels, New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, →OCLC, page 26:
text: Lord bless you, I know all the breeders about here; they are not a bad set, and they breed a very fairish set of horses, but they are not like what their fathers were, nor are their horses like their fathers' horses .
ref: 2019, George Borrow, Theodore Watts-Dunton, The Romany Rye:
text: "I did pretty fairish," replied Benjamin, modestly
ref: 1872, Edward Peacock, Mabel Heron, page 220:
text: Altogether we got a fairish lot of skins of one kind and another .
ref: 1873, Cupples Howe, The Deserted Ship, page 36:
text: For those who aspire to do the highest and most difficult work, all this may be necessary; but for those who would like to experiment in the art, and who with to turn out fairish work and get results good enough for ordinary purposes, a much cheaper and simpler apparatus will answer.·
ref: 1891, J. G. P. Vereker, “Freehand Drawing and Photography”, in Journal of Microscopy and Natural Science, page 228:
glosses: Of moderate quality, size, etc.
examples: text: Lord Loam (To Tompsett, as they partake of tea together): And how are all at home?
 Tompsett: Fairish, my lord,
ref: 1902, James M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton:
text: " How are you, Mudge –all right?" "Fairish much obliged to you for lugging me home .My man told me."
ref: 1911, Marjorie Benton Cooke, Dr. David, page 33:
text: While feeling " fairish," she had lost her appetite again; was being fed liver extract .
ref: 1935, Journal of the Outdoor Life - Volume 32, page 11:
glosses: In reasonable health and spirits, but not great.
examples: text: Then I went and fetched him; though I had the deuce of a bother making the coppers believe that he was my brother—you see he was in a fairish mess, but he did look like a gentleman, which is more than I do nowadays.
ref: 1915, Elinor Mordaunt, The Family, page 308:
text: 'It seems you'll find a fairish mess out in Austria,' said Basil.
ref: 1921, David Herbert Lawrence, The Ladybird:
text: At the same time, I have tried to stand back and describe objectively why and how, in the then Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurds words, it turned out to be a "fairish nightmare"—a nightmare for which most principals involved, including myself, bear some responsitibility.
ref: 2013, Tim Lankester, The Politics and Economics of Britain's Foreign Aid, page 139:
glosses: Used as a mile intensifier
examples: text: This was a. fairish judgement, he thought, if hard.·
ref: 1977, Stanley Middleton, Ends and Means, page 224:
text: 'It's a. fairish price, ' he said grudgingly.
ref: 2015, Robert Fabbri, Rome's Lost Son:
text: I had a fairish contract, and though the mail was a heavy one, I was able to manage it by riding one horse and leading a packer.
ref: 2022, Rolf Boldrewood, In Bad Company, and other stories:
glosses: Of reasonable fairness; even-handed or equitable, but probably not as good as one wants.
examples: text: Fairish all day but clouded all over at 6 p.m.
ref: 1909 July 1, “The Weather”, in Journal of Agriculture and Horticulture, volume 13, number 1, page 45:
text: "Well, well," he went on slowly, "a fairish day–a bit frost coming. Nelse says there'll be snow up the Lake diveesion, late as it is."
ref: 1910, Charles Tenney Jackson, My Brother's Keeper, page 273:
text: Morn fairish, after cloudy and rainy appearance .
ref: 1972, Samuel Curwen, Andrew Oliver, The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist, page 833:
text: Weather forecasts were good again and the chances of arriving at Maddon's Rock in fairish weather looked reasonably bright .
ref: 2013, Hammond Innes, Maddon's Rock:
glosses: Mostly mild and clement.
raw_tags: of weather
examples: text: Suetonius describes Augustus with leviter inflexum et subflavum 'wavy and fairish' hair (Divus Augustus 79), which, coupled with his bright eyes and medium complexion , perhaps awards him the bravery of a lion (Evans 1935: 65–6; 1969:53-4; Gascou 1984:603).
ref: 2001, John V. Day, Indo-European Origins: The Anthropological Evidence, page 124:
text: Of middling height, with fairish skin and raven dark curls peeking from beneath a stylish bonnet.
ref: 2004, Leslie Lafoy, The Perfect Temptation:
text: One, I'm pretty sure, is Edward Monkford. The same fairish curls framing a lean, ascetic face as in a photo I found on the internet; the same black cashmere pullover and white open-necked shirt.
ref: 2017, JP Delaney, The Girl Before:
glosses: Somewhat fair or light-colored.
raw_tags: of hair or skin
examples: text: In this tongue she sang the children ballads and told them tales of the 'fairish' (fairies) which lived in the Bottom before machinery drove them away, stories of the graves under the rectory back-kitchen, 'of witches running red-hot needles into human flesh.'
ref: 1928, Romer Wilson, All Alone: The Life and Private History of Emily Jane Brontë, page 65:
text: This tale opens in "that part of merry England called Derbyshire" (3); when the foundling character, Sydney, is introduced in a British garden, he is immediately associated with fairies or the "fairish” (4).
ref: 2016, Abigail Heiniger, Jane Eyre's Fairytale Legacy at Home and Abroad, page 38:
text: In the glory days of the royal fairish clan, members of the royal fairish family were given the special task of travelling to Felanthiam and caring for their mother star.
ref: 2018, Tephra Miriam, Escape to Clown Town, page 31:
glosses: Pertaining to fairies.
Derived terms: fairishly