raritas

Forms

rāritās f (genitive rāritātis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin rārus (“loose, sparse, rare”) + -tās.^[2][3][1] De Vaan finds no convincing origin for rārus.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cicero uses it for the loose, sponge-like texture of the lungs.^[2][5][6]

Semantic evolution

The TLL notes that the word occurs only in prose, from Cicero on, and is frequent in Vitruvius and Pliny the Elder.^[3] Its first sense was looseness of texture, as of the lungs or of gaps between the teeth, and by extension a gap or cavity.^[2][5] It then meant thinness of spread, sparseness, as of trees,^[2] and the rarity or infrequency of something, and an exceptional case, “a rarity”.^[2]

English took it over as rarity, first in the sense of thinness or porosity in the early 15th century and in the sense of scarcity from the 1550s.^[7]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it for the porous texture of the lungs.^[2][6]
• 14–37 AD – Celsus uses it for the rarity of some diseases.^[2][6]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it for sparse trees and for an exceptional case.^[2][6]
• early 15th century – English borrows it as rarity, “thinness, porosity”.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. Looseness of texture, a porous structure.^[2][5]
2. A gap, cavity or interstice.^[2]
3. Thinness of spread, sparseness.^[2]
4. Rarity, infrequency.^[2][1]
5. A rare thing, an exceptional instance.^[2][1]

Related words

• rārus
• English rarity

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com