bid fair

English

Verb

bid fair (third-person singular simple present bids fair, present participle bidding fair, simple past bade fair, past participle bidden fair)

  1. (usually followed by "to") To have a reasonable claim; to seem likely.
    • 1828, Peter Miller Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales, page 52:
      A number of the phrases current in St. Giles's Greek bid fair to become legitimatised in the dictionary of this colony: plant, swag, pulling up, and other epithets of the Tom and Jerry school, are established — […]
    • 1959 February, “Letters to the Editor: Diggle Water Troughs”, in Railway Magazine, page 135:
      Diggle Station lies high up in the Pennine Chain, subject to extreme low temperatures. With this and heavy snowfall in the winter months, Diggle bids fair to compete with the Scottish lines under similar weather conditions, and the provision of unfrozen water in the higher ambient temperature of the tunnel must be a boon to harassed engine drivers whose thirsty steeds run short of water up the gruelling 1 in 125 seven-mile climb from Stalybridge.
    • 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 632:
      Yet this English experimentation abruptly ended when Edward, after a healthy and assertive childhood in which he bade fair to be as over-lifesize as his formidable father, died young in 1553.
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