fair to middling

• fair-to-middling, fair to middlin', fair to meddling

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 ^[1] but the first instance of this usage being generalised is from an American publication of 1837^[2]

fair to middling (not comparable)

1. (idiomatic, usually hyphenated when placed before noun) Only tolerably good; somewhat favorable.

   Synonyms: adequate, OK, tolerable

   • 1907, Mark Twain, chapter 7, in Christian Science:

     "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.

   • 1911, Peter B. Kyne, chapter 29, in Captain Scraggs or The Green-Pea Pirates:

     Not a heluva good one, but fair to middlin’.

   • 2009 November 20, William C. Rhoden, “Sports of The Times: Iverson Isn’t the Answer for Knicks”, in New York Times, retrieved 20 December 2011:

     For 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.

• “fair to middling”, in Collins English Dictionary.