What this line may mean to you?

Something about it.

No. "Fair" is a noun. "World" modifies "fair".

Can I take it to mean ...


Can I take it to mean this fair world?

You can take it to mean anything you choose.

"World fair" meaning "fair world" is an example of poetic inversion, a technique that is very dated in English.

Unfortunately "World Fair" is an established English, two-word concept which has overriding connotations for most English listeners.

People aren't giving you a plain, simple answer.

Here, fair is being used as a noun. Merriam-Websters online dictionary give the following definition of "fair" used as a noun, in the meaning it has in your sentence:



"World fair" (also "World's Fair," or "world's fair) has the special meaning of a fair at which people from all over the world to show the products which they hope to sell, as well as to enjoy the entertainment. In the United States, famous world fairs include the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 (technically speaking, it was the Louisiana Purchase Exposition) and the New York World's Fair in 1939, which was a spectacular failure. There have been literally dozens and dozens of "world's fairs" since the 18th century (Wikipedia lists an exposition in London in 1756 as the first "world's fair").

So, your sentence is misleading in that it writes "world fair," rather than "world's fair." But to a native English speaker, the meaning of world fair is immediately evident. It means an exposition of products and a site for entertainments which claims to have gathered exhibitors from all over the world.

I can't think why the other people here have made this so needlessly hard for you. If you don't yet understand what a fair is, as a noun, in this context, i'll try to give you a better explanation.

Noddy, you should be ashamed of yourself for coming up with that airy-fairy crap when this person is trying to learn English.

The use of fair as a noun to mean a gathering of people for entertainment and to buy and sell goods goes back perhaps as much as a thousand years. The usage in English goes back to middle English, at least 800 years. There is a nursery rhyme which has been known for perhaps that long entitled "Simple Simon," which is known to almost every native speaker of English:

Simple Simon met a pieman going to the fair;
Said Simple Simon to the pieman "Let me taste your ware"
Said the pieman to Simple Simon "Show me first your penny"
Said Simple Simon to the pieman "Sir, I have not any!"

Here, the pieman, a man who sells supposedly freshly baked pies made with meat and pastry (there were no McDonald's restaurants 800 years ago) is going to a fair, to a place where he can quickly make a profit selling his pies. Simple Simon refers to the "ware" of the pieman, meaning what he has for sale, which is pies. The usage "ware" in the singular is almost unknown today--people almost invariably use the plural, "wares." But the word survives in other usages--a warehouse is a place where someone stores the goods they transport or sell.

The fair as an institution for entertainment and for buying and selling has been around for a long, long time, thousands of years. The use of the word "fair" in that meaning is at least many centuries old.

Shame on all these English-speakers for not immediately setting you straight about this.

Oh, Set, you're such a brute.

I enjoy it, too.

EhBeth is a lucky woman.

"One prayer rises from this world fair."

Rather hard to guess intentions when we are not given the context of this line. However, if we give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume he or she is an experienced writer, then I'd suggest that the last two words of the line are intentionally ambiguous.

Then, we'd have "fair world," suggesting a positive environment, placed in conflict with an echo of the familiar phrase "world's fair," suggesting a negative environment, dominated by hustle and spectacle rather than quiet beauty. This is a very familiar ambiguity in literature--some would say a cliche.

Frankly, with those ringer words "prayer rises" earlier in the line, I'm tempted to think we are looking at a single verse abstracted from a work of an earlier time, in which the inversion would have been common--and, therefore, the principle meaning here would be that of "fair world."

Of course, I may be completely wrong. If it turns out, however, that there is "one prayer" from everyone at a world's fair, my guess is that it would be for the long lines suddenly to evaporate.

You got it!
Dear Miklos7,
Thanks. You got it. I mean "One prayer arises from this fair world" in order for it to rhyme with "A harmonious world we create and share".

I mean to use this line "One prayer arises from this world fair" to replace a line which does not rhyme with the last line in a translation of a song for the forthcoming Olympic Games.

Besides, world fair is not spelt as World Fair, so I don't think this line is ambiguous.

Again, thanks for your support.

My profound apologies to the native English-speakers posting here, whom i have unwittingly defamed. I have now seen this thread by Fansy, which makes it clear that the line in question (in context, rather awkward) was written by someone who is not a native-speaker of English, and possibly by Fansy herself (her? him?).

Again, my apologies for having assumed that the line in question had a genuine context beyond the invention of the author of this thread.