rare
part of speech
adjective (rare, rarer, rarest)
meaning for a pupil
1) Rare means not happening often or not found often; there are only a few of it. tree →
2) Rare (about meat, especially steak) means cooked only a little, so it is still red inside. tree →
3) In old or informal speech, rare can mean very or extremely. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science, a rare animal or plant has very few left in the world and may be endangered, like the kakapo or Sumatran tiger. In maths and probability, a rare event is unlikely, with a small chance. In everyday life, rare coins, stamps or cards are valuable because there are few. In cooking, beef steak can be rare, medium or well done (but chicken and burgers must be cooked through for safety). Phrases: «rare animal», «a rare chance», «in rare cases», «rare earth», «rare steak».
examples
- Snow is rare in Sydney. tree →
- The giant panda is a rare animal. tree →
- This rare stamp is worth a lot of money. tree →
- It's rare for our teacher to be late. tree →
- In rare cases, a bee sting can be dangerous. tree →
- He likes his steak rare. tree →
- Getting six sixes in a row is very rare. tree →
- A shooting star is a rare and lucky sight. tree →
- “That'll be rare nasty,” says the cook. tree →
note
Comparative rarer, superlative rarest; adverb rarely (not often). Opposite: common. In probability, rare = unlikely (close to 0), not impossible. Do not eat chicken or minced meat rare; it must be cooked all the way through.
In the corpora
- Plane crashes and terror attacks are on the news because they are very rare; millions of flights land safely every day.
- Rare or tricky questions get answers that only sound good.
- The vaquita, a porpoise in Mexico, is the rarest sea mammal; around ten were reported in recent surveys.
- Sharks don't hunt humans; bites are very rare and often a mistake, and people kill around 100 million sharks a year.
- Harris's hawks hunt in family groups, which is rare for birds of prey, and they are often trained by falconers.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «rare» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.