Etymograph

English

fare

Fare comes from Middle English fare.

  1. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500fare1
  2. Englishearliest quotation 1918fare1

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, English fare
  2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1918, William Babington Maxwell, Indianapolis: ““[…] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness.…”.

Earlier history not traced here. See Wiktionary.

Lineage

  1. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500fareWiktionary, English fare
  2. Englishearliest quotation 1918fareWiktionary, English fare. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1918, William Babington Maxwell, Indianapolis: ““[…] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness.…”

Every English word from Middle English fare

Another origin of fare

  1. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*per-‘a going, passage’reconstructed
  2. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*faraną‘to go, to travel’reconstructed
  3. Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*faran‘to travel’reconstructed
  4. Old Englishc. 450–1150faran‘to travel, journey’
  5. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500faren‘to move, go or travel’
  6. Englishtodayfare

Today it means

noun A going; journey; travel; voyage; course; passage.

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “fare”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Middle English fare / fare

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