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rare

adj
/ɹɛ//ɹɛə(ɹ)/UK/ɹɛɚ/CA

Etymology

From Middle English rare, from Old French rare, rere (“rare, uncommon”), from Latin rārus (“loose, spaced apart, thin, infrequent”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁reh₁- (“friable, thin”). Displaced native English geason (“rare, scarce”) (from Middle English gesen, from Old English gǣsne); and replaced Middle English seld (“rare, uncommon”) (from Old English selden) and Middle English seldscene (“rare, rarely seen, infrequent”) (from Old English seldsēne).

  1. derived from *h₁reh₁-✻ — “friable, thin”
  2. derived from rārus — “loose, spaced apart, thin, infrequent”
  3. derived from rare
  4. inherited from rare

Definitions

  1. Very uncommon

    Very uncommon; scarce.

    • Black pearls are very rare and therefore very valuable.
    • While many material components in Andromeda are familiar, we have also discovered rarer and more valuable materials; attributable to exposure to the Scourge, or mysterious alien technology.

  2. Small in number (but not unusual)

    Small in number (but not unusual); infrequent; sparse.

  3. Thin

    Thin; of low density.

  4. ›+ 7 more definitions

    1. Good

      Good; enjoyable.

      • Sees her reflection in a butcher shop. She finds it all quite rare That her meat's all vanity fair.

    2. Cool

      Cool; excellent.

      • I whistled for a cab and when it came near / The license plate said ‘fresh’ and it had dice in the mirror. / If anything I could say that this cab was rare.

    3. A scarce or uncommon item.

      • Most of the time, you do this by trading low-valued rares for more valuable ones or trading uncommons for rares. Other times it's trading cards that are in print for ones that are out of print, or low-value rares for good uncommons.

    4. Particularly of meat, especially beefsteak

      Particularly of meat, especially beefsteak: cooked very lightly, so the meat is still red.

      • Then Curds and Cream, the Flow'r of Country Fare, / And new-laid Eggs, which Baucis’ buſie Care / Turn’d by a gentle Fire, and roaſted rare.

    5. To rear, rise up, start backwards.

      • Frank pretended to rare back as if bedazzled, shielding his eyes with a forearm.

    6. To rear, bring up, raise.

      • Here I have to say that I was walking along dark-hearted, my nose out of joint about Audie's notice of her, for just as quickly as my feelings kindled, my old envy rared.

    7. Early.

      • The men, that sway / In work of those tools that so fit our state, / Are rude mechanicals, that rare and late / Work in the market-place;

The neighborhood

Derived

in rare form, nonrare, on rare form, rare animal, rare as a four-leaf clover, rare as hen's teeth, rare as rocking horse shit, rare bird, rare earth, rare earth element, rare-earth element, rare earth magnet, rare earth metal, rare earth mineral, rare gas, rare groove, rareish, rareness, rarepair, raresome, rare spring-sedge, rarify, semirare, superrare, ultrarare, unrare, vanishingly rare

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at rare. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01rare02low03ground04opposed05acting06deed07feat

A definitional loop anchored at rare. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

7 hops · closes at rare

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA