If something is Fair To Middling it is generally accepted as being average, or just above. Originally, the phrase was used in the American cotton industry in the mid-19th century. Commercial cotton was graded in groups ranging between inferior and fine. The average was known as “middling” and the grade above was called “fair”. The term was in wide use in the US by 1837 and in the October of that year the Southern Literary Messenger of Richmond, Virginia, reported the following: “A dinner on the Plains, Tuesday September 20th – given at the country seat of JC Jones, Esq for the officers of the Peacock and Enterprise. The viands [items of food] were fair to middling.” Then, the phrase was first listed in England in the Century Dictionary of 1889 as meaning “moderately good”.