fair shake

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

fair shake (plural fair shakes)

1. (idiomatic) Reasonable, unbiased treatment; a fair deal.

   Synonyms: fair crack of the whip, fair go, fair shake of the sauce bottle, fair suck of the sav, fair suck of the sauce bottle

   • 1973 November 20, “Army Rejects Plea To Erase 2 Charges On Benedict Arnold”, in New York Times, retrieved 24 May 2017:

     Raymond J. Williams, the board's executive secretary, told a reporter, "We tried to give the guy [Arnold] a fair shake."

   • 1980 April 14, David Aikman, “In Seattle: Up from Revolution”, in Time, retrieved 24 May 2017:

     "America is not ideologically racist. Americans are willing to give people a fair shake."

   • 2009 July 16, Christopher McGimpsey, “The absurd quest for a united Ireland”, in Guardian, UK, retrieved 24 May 2017:

     The average citizen in the republic wants to go to bed at night and feel that Catholics in Northern Ireland are receiving a fair shake.

   • 2015 May 11, Charlie Gillis, “Inside the daddy wars”, in Maclean's Magazine, Canada, retrieved 24 May 2017:

     A vast network of fathers’ groups, labour lawyers, bloggers and social advocates rallied to his cause, forcing a national conversation about whether caregiving fathers were getting a fair shake.

   • 2022 October 23, Michael H. Keller, David D. Kirkpatrick, “Their America Is Vanishing. Like Trump, They Insist They Were Cheated.”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     “You feel like you’re the underdog and you don’t get a fair shake, so you look for people that are going to shake it up,” she said of the local support for Mr. Trump’s dispute of the election results.

See also

• no great shakes

References

• John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary