Fairness is treating everybody by the same honest rules. A sense of fairness, in fairness to him, questions of fairness.
In fairness to somebody is a phrase used to introduce a point in their favour, usually just after criticising them. Fairness is one of the earliest moral ideas children develop and one of the hardest to define — most disputes about it are really disputes about which rule should apply. Note fair, which also means light-coloured and, of weather, fine; and fair play, which is the British name for the whole idea.
1nounfairnessTreating everybody by the same honest rules.
“The referee was praised for his fairness to both teams.”
fairness is an even-handedness.
Old English faegernes meant beauty rather than justice — fair meant pleasing to look at. The sense of even-handedness arrived in Middle English and has almost entirely displaced the older one.
Old English
fæġernes — fairness; beauty; pleasantness
Middle English
fairness
English, today
fairness
From Middle English fairness, fæȝernesse, from Old English fæġernes (“fairness; beauty; pleasantness”), equivalent to fair + ness. Cognate with Old High German fagarnessi (“fairness”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA