rare
/ɹɛɚ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.77 in modern English
4
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Small in number (but not unusual); infrequent; sparse.
adj
Thin; of low density.
adj
Particularly of meat, especially beefsteak: cooked very lightly, so the meat is still red.
Example Sentences
- "Black pearls are very rare and therefore very valuable."
- "Plant breeding is always a numbers game.[…]The wild species we use are rich in genetic variation, and individual plants are highly heterozygous and do not breed true. In addition, we are looking for rare alleles, so the more plants we try, the better."
- "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."
- "The anterior and posterior skin of the upper chest and shoulders demonstrated irregularly jagged borders with areas of soot and charring focally. The soft and bony tissues underlying the borders were markedly damaged by presumed explosive injuries. There were rare abrasions and contusions of the chest and upper extremities. The lower extremities demonstrated rare abrasions and contusions as well as severe lacerations of the anteromedial knees with underlying fractures of the distal aspects of the femora (Image 4)."
- "Moreover, the SF [Superficial fascia] splits to surround vessels and nerves, ensuring their patency, and forms the so-called retinacula cutis, which has the function of connecting the SF to the skin (retinacula cutis superficialis, or skin ligaments) and to the deep fascia (retinacula cutis profundis), to provide a dynamic and flexible anchor of the skin to underlying tissues [16,20]. The deep septa are rare, thin, and oblique and have an apparent lesser organization, allowing great autonomy between superficial and deep fascia."
- "Sees her reflection in a butcher shop. She finds it all quite rare That her meat's all vanity fair."
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 largely displaced Middle English seld (“rare, uncommon”) (from Old English selden) and Middle English seldscene (“rare, rarely seen, infrequent”) (from Old English seldsēne) hence modern English seld
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ɹɛɚ/
- British English: /ɹɛə/
Usage
- British usage
- Slang
- American usage
- Intransitive verb
- Transitive verb
- Obsolete
Inflected Forms
rarer (comparative)
rarest (superlative)
rares (plural)
more rare (comparative)
most rare (superlative)
reer (alternative, UK)
rere (alternative, UK)
rares (present, singular)
raring (participle, present)
rared (participle, past)
rared (past)