Englishfair to middling
Meaning: Average; neither good nor bad.
Example: “"How are you?" "Oh, fair to middling."”
Equivalents in other languages
Chinese: 马马虎虎 (Mǎmǎhūhū) Literally: Horse horse, tiger tiger
Origin: Rooted in 19th-century American cotton grading, where raw cotton was sorted into a fixed hierarchy of quality running roughly from fine at the top down through good, fair, middling, and ordinary to inferior at the bottom, with several finer gradations in between. "Fair to middling" named a specific middling range of that scale, quoted routinely enough in cotton-market pricing that the phrase escaped the trade and entered everyday speech, first appearing in print in the early 1820s. "Middling" itself, for anything occupying a mediocre middle ground between extremes, is older and Scottish in origin, predating its specific use in the cotton trade.
More English idioms
- far cry from something Much less than what was expected or anticipated.
- feel something in one's bones To sense something without being able to see, hear or feel it; to have a premonition.
- feel the pinch To have less money than one used to have, and less than one feels is necessary.
- feather in one's cap An exceptional achievement.
- fill the bill To suit or satisfy a need.
- filthy rich Extremely wealthy.
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Words that look familiar in another language but mean something else entirely.
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