Macbeth is full of unusual, shifting ambiguous words: it really is a play in which, as Macbeth himself says,
...Nothing is
But what is not
It's one of Shakespeare's shortest plays and yet each line is packed with meaning which both looks forward and backward in the play.
You're right to pick up on "Fair is foul..." and there's lots of things to say about it. Like the quote I've given above, it's very difficult to tease out the precise sense: it's sort of self-cancelling (or self-affirming, depending on whether you think "fair" is both "fair" and "foul", or neither...), Macbeth currently appears "fair" (he's won "golden opinions" from all kinds of people") but will soon become "foul". The witches' prophecies sound "so fair", as Banquo says, but have another "foul" undercurrent.
"Fair", as Banquo's line "Why do you start and seem to fear / things that do sound so fair" points up, is also a close relation of "fear", and aural echoes in lines are also an important part of the paradoxical, juxtapositions of this play. Look at the way "I'll do and I'll do and I'll do" becomes Macbeth's "If 'twere done when tis done then 'twere best it were done quickly".
It's a play where you never know whether Macbeth is acting freely, or under evil influence. You never quite know what anything means. Nothing is - but what is not.
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