How does one manage the need for expedience and find the point where increasing precision has diminishing returns? As ambiguous as some of these modal adverbs are they are usually precise enough for the statements one might try to make. If I say “It’ll likely rain tomorrow, best to take an umbrella” whether I think it’s 55% or 98% is not really that important as it has exceeded the threshold I have for “umbrella weather”. In other cases though such ambiguity is unacceptable.
As a side note, “Fair” is a particularly ambiguous adjective as it is often[1] employed to mean a uniform probability distribution (i.e. the most equitable), or in accordance with custom or moral imperatives (i.e. “He adjudicated fairly”), a large or advantageous degree or amount (i.e. “Hulkenberg got a fair amount of laps in before the red flag”), something which is pleasing to look at (i.e. if you want to employ pseudo-medieval tropes make sure to refer to a young woman as a ‘fair maiden’) and finally and least relevant—something pale as in “fair complexion”. I’m sure etymologically these all are examples of drift from one original meaning. However someone uses the phrase “fair chance” is likely coloured by at least one of these meanings.
I’m aware of the irony of using a word like “often” in a discussion about the ambiguity of chance related words. Here I mean each variation on the meaning of “fair” is used in discourse frequently enough to earn entries in respected dictionaries, however: you try concisely putting that in a sentence.
How does one manage the need for expedience and find the point where increasing precision has diminishing returns? As ambiguous as some of these modal adverbs are they are usually precise enough for the statements one might try to make. If I say “It’ll likely rain tomorrow, best to take an umbrella” whether I think it’s 55% or 98% is not really that important as it has exceeded the threshold I have for “umbrella weather”. In other cases though such ambiguity is unacceptable.
As a side note, “Fair” is a particularly ambiguous adjective as it is often[1] employed to mean a uniform probability distribution (i.e. the most equitable), or in accordance with custom or moral imperatives (i.e. “He adjudicated fairly”), a large or advantageous degree or amount (i.e. “Hulkenberg got a fair amount of laps in before the red flag”), something which is pleasing to look at (i.e. if you want to employ pseudo-medieval tropes make sure to refer to a young woman as a ‘fair maiden’) and finally and least relevant—something pale as in “fair complexion”. I’m sure etymologically these all are examples of drift from one original meaning. However someone uses the phrase “fair chance” is likely coloured by at least one of these meanings.
I’m aware of the irony of using a word like “often” in a discussion about the ambiguity of chance related words. Here I mean each variation on the meaning of “fair” is used in discourse frequently enough to earn entries in respected dictionaries, however: you try concisely putting that in a sentence.