fair game
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Legitimately targeted or criticized
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Được chỉ trích hoặc nhắm mục tiêu một cách hợp pháp
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: prey that can be hunted
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
In this sense, Kant argues, ‘ the dog can not judge’, which does not mean that it is fair game for any purpose we might devise.
But the military has recently extended its brief to make all trade union leaders ‘ fair game’.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “fair game” mean?
Legitimately targeted or criticized Literally: prey that can be hunted
Is “fair game” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.