Meaning
A person who is friendly, helpful or loyal only while things go well, and disappears when trouble, hardship or misfortune arrives. The model for later extensions such as 'fair-weather fan', a supporter who backs a team only while it is winning. Informal to neutral, almost always disapproving. Often contrasted with 'all-weather friend'; keep it distinct from the separate proverb 'a friend in need is a friend indeed'. The hyphenated spelling is standard in edited prose, but 'fairweather friend' and 'fair weather friend' are also attested. Regional use: British English in origin (Edinburgh 1685, London 1730); now standard throughout the English-speaking world.
Origin
A plain weather metaphor - friendship that holds only in sunshine, not in storms. Retellings of a nautical or farming origin, or a Francis Bacon coinage, have no support in the record; the earliest citations are simply meteorological. The earliest known use is William Clark's The grand Tryal: Or, Poetical Exercitations upon the Book of Job (Edinburgh, 1685): 'Then those Fair-weather-friends bid us farewel.' Wiktionary's earliest quotation is Alexander Pope's letter to John Gay of 1 October 1730, published 1735: 'My Fair-Weather-Friends of the Summer are going away for London.' A Spanish proverb, Englished in 1725 as 'A fair weather friend, turns with the wind', shows the idea was proverbial on the Continent too. Later uses include Smollett's Peregrine Pickle (1751-58) and Godwin's Fleetwood (1805). The pattern later spawned extensions such as fair-weather fan; its antonymic twin is all-weather friend.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- fair-weather fan
- fair-weather friendship
- fairweather friend
Usage Examples
- When the money ran out, his fair-weather friends stopped returning his calls.
- She proved no fair-weather friend, driving four hours to help me move.
- The stadium emptied of fair-weather fans the moment the team stopped winning.