Rare vs Few - What's the difference?
rare | few |
(cooking, particularly meats) Cooked very lightly, so the meat is still red (in the case of steak or beef in the general sense).
* Dryden
Very uncommon; scarce.
* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author=
, title= (label) Thin; of low density.
(US) To rear, rise up, start backwards.
* 2006 , Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day , Vintage 2007, p. 328:
(US) To rear, bring up, raise.
(obsolete) early
* Chapman
(preceded by another determiner) An indefinite, but usually small, number of.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= (used alone) Not many; a small (in comparison with another number stated or implied) but somewhat indefinite number of.
(meteorology, of clouds) (US?) Obscuring one eighth to two eighths of the sky.
(meteorology, of rainfall with regard to a location) (US?) Having a 10 percent chance of measurable precipitation (0.01 inch); used interchangeably with isolated.
As a determiner few
is an indefinite, but usually small, number of.As a pronoun few
is few people, few things.As a proper noun Few
is the pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain.As an adjective rare is
cooked very lightly, so the meat is still red (in the case of steak or beef in the general sense).As a verb rare is
to rear, rise up, start backwards.rare
English
Etymology 1
From a dialectal variant of rear, from (etyl) rere, from (etyl) . More at (l).Alternative forms
* (l), (l) (UK)Adjective
(en-adj)- New-laid eggs, which Baucis' busy care / Turned by a gentle fire, and roasted rare .
Synonyms
* (cooked very lightly) sanguinaryAntonyms
* (cooked very lightly) well doneDerived terms
* medium-rareEtymology 2
From (etyl) rare, from (etyl) rare, .Adjective
(er)David Van Tassel], [http://www.americanscientist.org/authors/detail/lee-dehaan Lee DeHaan
Wild Plants to the Rescue, volume=101, issue=3, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Plant breeding is always a numbers game.
Synonyms
* (very uncommon) scarce, selcouth, seld, seldsome, selly, geason, uncommonAntonyms
* (very uncommon) commonDerived terms
* rare bird * rare earth mineralEtymology 3
Variant of rear .Verb
(rar)- Frank pretended to rare back as if bedazzled, shielding his eyes with a forearm.
Usage notes
* (rft-sense) Principal current, non-literary use is of the present participle raring' with a verb in "'''raring''' to". The principal verb in that construction is ''go''. Thus, '''''raring''' to go'' ("eager (to start something)") is the expression in which '''''rare is most often encountered as a verb.Etymology 4
Compare rather, rath.Adjective
(en adjective)- Rude mechanicals that rare and late / Work in the market place.
Anagrams
* ----few
English
Determiner
A new prescription, passage=No sooner has a [synthetic] drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one. These “legal highs” are sold for the few months it takes the authorities to identify and ban them, and then the cycle begins again.}}
- I was expecting lots of people at the party, but very few''''' (=''almost none'') ''turned up. Quite a '''few''' of them'' (=''many of them'') ''were pleasantly surprised. I don't know how many drinks I've had, but I've had a '''few . [This usage is likely ironic.]
- NOAA definition of the term "few clouds": An official sky cover classification for aviation weather observations, descriptive of a sky cover of 1/8 to 2/8. This is applied only when obscuring phenomenon aloft are present--that is, not when obscuring phenomenon are surface-based, such as fog.
Usage notes
* (term) is used with plural nouns only; its synonymous counterpart (little) is used with nouns. * Although indefinite in nature, a few is usually more than two (two often being referred to as "a couple of"), and less than "several". If the sample population is say between 5 and 20, a few would mean three or four, but no more than this. However, if the population sample size were in the millions, "a few" could refer to several hundred items. In other words, few'' in this context means ''a very very small percentage but way over the 3 or 4 usually ascribed to it its use with much much smaller numbers. : (term) is grammatically affirmative but semantically negative, and it can license negative polarity items. For example, lift a finger usually cannot be used in affirmative sentences, but can be used in sentences with (term). *: He didn't lift a finger to help us. *: *He lifted a finger to help us. (ungrammatical) *: Few people lifted a finger to help us. *: *A few people lifted a finger to help us. (ungrammatical) *: *Fewer people lifted a finger to help us. (ungrammatical)Synonyms
* little (see usage)Antonyms
* manyDerived terms
* a few * quite a fewAntonyms
* manyReferences
* Meteorology (both senses) *:NOAA Glossary: f