“Fair to Middling” Meaning and Origin

Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hey there. This is Kalisa calling from Wilmington, North Carolina.

Kalisa, welcome to the show.

Hello, Kalisa.

What’s on your mind?

I was wondering about a phrase that my grandmother uses often, and she says the phrase, when you ask her how she is, she says, well, I’m fairly middling. And at first I thought she was saying fairly, like F-A-R-F-A-I-R-L-Y, middling, as in I guess like middling around. But I learned that that’s not really what she’s saying. And I wanted to know, first of all, what is the full phrase and where did that come from? Because I’ve heard several different things about the history of it.

Huh. So she says fairly middling?

Well, it sounds like she’s saying fairly Midland, but then I learned the phrase is fair to Midland. So it comes from like farm workers or cotton picker workers, and that’s how they graded the cotton, I guess. I don’t know, but it always sounds like she’s saying fairly Midland, like barely getting by is what I assumed she meant.

Yeah, the much more common expression is fair to Midland. And as you suggested, it comes from the old system of grading products, agricultural products like livestock, like sheep or cotton or something like that. And there were all different ways of classifying those goods. I don’t know why they didn’t do it on a numeric, numerical basis or something. But yeah, there were different categories like fine, fair, middling, ordinary, and then even more specific ones like barely fair or strict middling fair.

And so when people say I’m fair to middling, what they usually mean is I’m about average. Although some people say fair to middling and they mean I’m not feeling so well.

Yeah, negative.

Middling, by the way, just for everyone, we’re not pronouncing the G at the end, but it looks like middling, M-I-D-D-L-I-N-G, middling.

Yeah, and we often get calls from Texas where people are saying, I’ve heard this expression fair to Midland, and they’re thinking of Midland to Texas, but it’s not that.

So it sounds like she’s using another variant of that.

Yeah, because Midland can exist on its own as an adjective. There’s plenty of uses of it in historical record going back well into the 1800s, and it just means average, right there in the middle somewhere.

Okay, that’s so interesting. And it’s interesting how people put their own spin on it because I’ve heard several of my grandparents use it where it sounds like they’re saying fairly or fair to. That’s so interesting.

Okay. That’s great. So that’s pretty much it.

Perfect.

Well, thank you all so much. That really helps. I would love to keep doing research on this, and I want to write more about it. So this was so helpful.

Oh, our pleasure. Thanks for calling. We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Bye, Kalisa.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Take care.

Those expressions that make it around the family that you take for granted, one day they just pop into your mind and you’re like, what? Why did we say that? Well, this is the place to find out.

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