Other forms: fares, fared, fareed, faring
A fare is the price you pay to travel on a bus, train or taxi. The bus fare, a return fare, fare dodging.
Fare dodging is travelling without paying, and a penalty fare is the charge for being caught. A fare is also the passenger, in the language of taxi drivers: he picked up a fare at the station. There is a separate verb fare, meaning to get on — how did you fare, they fared badly — which is formal and old-fashioned. And bill of fare is an old term for a menu.
1nounfareThe price paid to travel on public transport.
“The fare went up twice in one year.”
2verbparticularTo get on in a particular way.
“The smaller shops fared much worse that winter.”
fare is a travel charge, or a getting on.
Old English faer meant a journey, from the verb faran, to travel — the same root as ferry, welfare and farewell. The fare was the journey before it was the price of one.
Proto-Indo-European
*per- (fare)
Proto-Indo-European
*per- — a going, passage
Proto-Germanic
*farą
Old English
fær — journey, road
Middle English
fare
English, today
fare
Built from
From Middle English fare, from a merger of Old English fær (“journey, road”) and faru (“journey, companions, baggage”), from Proto-Germanic farą and farō (“journey, fare”), from Proto-Indo-European per- (“a going, passage”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA