fair game
idiom

- someone or something that can be chased, attacked, or criticized.

- someone or something that people are allowed to criticize.

-  if someone or something is fair game, it is acceptable, reasonable, or right to criticize them.

Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Dictionary, Longman Dictionary

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PHRASE ORIGIN

The phrase has its roots in English hunting law, and its original meaning was entirely literal.

For centuries, British law carefully defined which animals could be hunted at which times of year. Animals designated as "game" — deer, pheasant, partridge, hare — were protected during certain seasons and on certain lands. To shoot or snare them outside those rules was poaching, a serious offence. But when the season was open and the land permitted it, those animals were "fair game": legally and ethically available to pursue.

The word fair here carries its older sense of "according to the rules" or "within the permitted bounds" — the same fair found in "fair play" and "fair and square." It meant not that the hunt was kind to the animal, but that it was legitimate under the rules of the sport.

By the early 19th century, the phrase had migrated from the field to everyday language. The shift was natural: just as a hunter needed permission — legal or social — to pursue an animal, so a critic, journalist, or rival needed some justification to go after a person or institution. "Fair game" became the shorthand for the moment that permission was granted.

The first recorded figurative uses in print date from around the 1820s, and the phrase has remained in active use ever since — expanding across politics, law, media, and even software development, wherever the question of legitimate targeting arises.

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HUNTING PHRASES

- You can’t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds = to support both sides of a conflict or dispute, to speak against something whilst actually doing it.

- Have a dog in the hunt = to have some vested interest in or something to gain by a given situation.

- Turkey shoot = a fight or competition that is one-sided because one combatant or competitor is far superior to the other.

- Shoot (look) daggers at s/o - To glare at s/o very angrily, spitefully, or disdainfully.

- A best shot = a very best attempt

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SYNONYMS

an acceptable/open target, an easy mark, anything goes, at someone's mercy, attackable, challengeable, criticisable, exposed, FAIR GAME, fodder for the press, free for all, game on, gloves are off, have someone in your sights, in someone's crosshairs, in the firing line, in the line of fire (the public eye, the spotlight, the stocks, lawful quarry), legitimate object of satire (target), not off limits, nothing is off the table, open season on someone, open to attack (criticism, to scrutiny), ripe for criticism, subject to attack, there for the taking, under fire, unprotected, up for grabs (for scrutiny), vulnerable, within rights

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

"In a democracy, no one is above criticism. Power, by definition, makes anyone in public office FAIR GAME”.

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