fair play
"fair-play" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“fair play” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Good behavior; conduct (in sports or another endeavor) that is respectful of the rules, the spirit of the activity, and the adversary.
Corpus desk
Index EN-fair-play · fair play · English
fair play · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "F" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | fair play |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “fair play” in English
Rare enough to double-check
fair play is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Good behavior; conduct (in sports or another endeavor) that is respectful of the rules, the spirit of the activity, and the adversary.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for fair play in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is fair play, spelled F-A-I-R- -P-L-A-Y.
Definition
- 1Good behavior; conduct (in sports or another endeavor) that is respectful of the rules, the spirit of the activity, and the adversary.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how fair play appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The result, eventually, was the conviction of Mr. Hiss on charges of perjury. But the feature that especially appealed to me was the reputation that Congressman Nixon had achieved for fairness in the investigating process. Not once had he overstepped the limits prescribed by the American sense of fair play or American rules applying to such investigations…
Financial fair play – talked about as if it is somehow nothing to do with the way the club is run, an imposition upon their work rather than a consequence of the way they work – meant that they could not spend what they do not generate.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.