Rarely

How to spell rarely

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rarely

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rarely mean?

1. adverbNot often; on few occasions.

Rarely in a sentence

• He rarely checks his personal email during work hours.

• The old factory machines rarely break down despite their age.

Where does rarely come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on the adjective 'rare', which English borrowed in the late 1300s from Old French 'rare', itself drawn from the Latin 'rarus', meaning 'thin', 'loosely arranged', or 'occurring at wide intervals'. In its earliest Latin sense 'rarus' described things spread thinly across space, such as scattered crops or sparse hair, before the meaning narrowed to things that are simply uncommon in number. The adverb 'rarely' was formed in English by adding the native suffix '-ly', which marks manner and frequency, so it literally meant 'in a sparse manner'. By the 1500s it had settled into its modern frequency sense of 'not often' or 'seldom'. The same 'rarus' root also gives us 'rarefy' and the noun 'rarity', and the doubled-vowel look of 'rare' is what makes writers occasionally hesitate over whether 'rarely' keeps the final 'e' before the suffix, which it does.

How the word is built

• rare (from Latin rarus: sparse, thin)
• -ly (adverb suffix)