(Certainly it's no coincidence that this era saw an uptick with the usage of fair to mean "morally good." That usage dates back to the 12th century, but the late 16th century introduced the phrases fair play and fair and square, setting the race status quo early on. Just in time, too with the arrival of Africans in England in 1551, Britons suddenly needed a term to distinguish their pale-skinned beauties from the new arrivals. But the youth in question is described as having a "gold complexion"-after all, we're comparing him to a summer's day-and during this time the meaning of fair broadened to include skin tone. The bulk of his sonnets were addressed to whom his scholars call the " Fair Youth"-and his uses of fair in these sonnets sticks with the original meaning. This changed with the Elizabethan era, and with that great language alchemist, Shakespeare. "The men of this province are of a fair and comely personage, but somewhat pale," wrote the narrator of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (circa 1357-1371). Until the 1550s, fair was used to describe a beautiful or attractive person with no regard to the color spectrum, and indeed with not much regard to sex. Fair derives from Old English faeger (beautiful, lovely, pleasant), which came from the Germanic and Norse fagar and fagr for beautiful. Fair meant beautiful before it meant light-complected, not the other way around.
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