rare

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"That's what I call a rare turn-out," said Baby, who enjoyed the proceeding amazingly.

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Definitions (23)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (4)

  1. adjective Infrequently occurring; uncommon: a rare event; a plant that is rare in this region.
  2. adjective Excellent; extraordinary: a rare sense of honor.
  3. adjective Thin in density: rarefied: rare air.
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Examples (50)

  • Even common metals were rare, which is why I had brought lots of ingots of copper, tin, aluminum to serve as cash In the distance, I spied huge nets stretched between poles set here and there around the terrain. —  Asimov's Science Fiction, March 2002
  • He also finds a shiny-faced stone that his second-hand geology book identifies as a rare and valuable meteorite. —  F ;SF; - vol 103 issue 04-05 - October-November 2002
  • Then war has become more rare, and is more reluctantly engaged in. —  Father Payne
  • But one ought to have seen Chekhov at certain moments (rare, alas, during the last years) when gayety possessed him, and when with a quick movement of the hand, he threw off his glasses and swung his chair and burst into gay, sincere and deep laughter. —  Reminiscences of Chekhov
  • The union of jarring consonants being rare, and the assonances easily multiplied, the same comparison might be employed to the ensemble of the effect produced by these idioms upon foreigners. —  Life of Chopin
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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rare:   rarer ·  rarest
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (5)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. Middle English, from Old French, from Latin rārus.
  2. Middle English rere, lightly boiled, from Old English hrēr; see kerə- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (3)

  1. from Middle English rare = Dutch raar = Middle Low German rār, Low German raar = G. Danish Swedish rar, from Old French rare, rere, French rare, dial, raire, rale, rase = Spanish Portuguese Italian raro, from Latin rarus, thin, not dense, thinly scattered, few, rare, uncommon; root unknown.
  2. A dial. form of rear, q. v.
  3. Also rear; prob. a reduction of rather (with sense of the positive rath): see rather, rath, adv. Cf. rareripe for rathripe.
 

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/rɛr/
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