Refine this word faster
Rara avis
"Rara avis" in a Sentence (17 examples)
Ramsay flung open the door. "Lord Fred—damn it we are all in the lurch!", he exclaimed, […] "my rara avises have taken wing and flown off." / "What were they actually, Ramsay?" asked Newbank. / "Two black swans," replied he—"the finest creatures ever were beheld, except another of the kind that is in company with them, though I understand there is more of the breed."
Over the next eight months, with practically no funding except for what I could borrow, with an afflicted conscience, from my mother, I scoured the remotest corners of Cuba for rarae aves. I hitchhiked, jumped freight trains, cajoled guajiros into lending me their mules, slept in caves or beneath the canopies of immense ceiba trees. Cuba's landscape had changed so dramatically in only a decade that even the once populous birds that Dr. Forrest and I had collected were nowhere to be found, or found, at most, as singletons or in minuscule bands.
That Parsons girl is quite the rara avis if you ask me.
And yet I knovv a Man vvho is all I have here deſcribed. But a ſingle Inſtance (and I really knovv not ſuch another) is not ſufficient to juſtify us, […] Such Raræ Aves ſhould be remitted to the Epitaph-VVriter, or to ſome Poet, vvho may condeſcend to hitch him in a Diſtich, or to ſlide him into a Rhime vvith an Air of Careleſneſs and Neglect, vvithout giving any Offence to the Reader.
Few attorneys are well acquainted with the etiquette of good society; those among the fraternity are raræ aves, who venture on the esquire or afford sealing-wax; hence there is usually a characteristic vulgarity about "a lawyer's letter," which identifies it at once.
One [Maori] man stated his surprise on seeing a boat land with seamen, who had black legs and white bodies; others with bright red bodies, and white legs speckled with white spots, according to the dresses they had on, which was supposed to form part of the body; but their fear was at its height on seeing these rara avises walk about the beech,^([sic – meaning beach?]) on which numbers of the natives ran up the hills, while others climbed the trees.
Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine; but certain it is that a lean joker is a rara avis in terris [rare bird on earth].
[…] Nazareth was one of those raræ aves of her sex, a self-contained, self-companioning woman, finding her best sympathizer, her best confidante, her most satisfactory friend, in Nazareth Pitcher; for Nazareth Sampson was non-existent as yet, except in name.
We are besides, for various reasons, compelled to employ higher-class labour than we could when the business was less complex, before there were serial issues, colonial and continental libraries, when translations were raræ aves, and when a casual ten-pound note was the Ultima Thule of our ambitions from America, &c.
The secret is—Frank Cravens.^([sic – meaning Frank Craven]) He is that rarest of rarae aves—the author-actor.
Show 7 more sentences
"But I do read De Quincey," Ralph protested, "more than Belloc and Chesterton, anyhow." / "Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Cosham, with a gesture of surprise and relief mingled. "You are, then, a rara avis in your generation. I am delighted to meet any one who reads De Quincey."
RARAE AVES OF THE STREET / There were colorful characters which moved through the Nassau Street atmosphere of the past and which have become legendary; Ginnity, the stamp finder of forty years ago, for example.
However that may be, the non-Catholic author who writes novels about Christ without betraying how the poison of modern Protestant theology has seeped down into literature is the rarest of rarae aves.
Again the tendency is very largely to use inside cylinders, but it is not quite so marked as in the case of tender engines; the 0-6-0 tank with outside cylinders is not quite the rara avis that the 0-6-0 tender has been.
As Muldoon himself recalls the encounter, his teacher, Jerry Hicks, introduced him to Heaney with the words, "This is the boy who'll be even better than you", which, as Muldoon says, "was inappropriate and very embarrassing". Hicks then added in a stage whisper: "Rara avis."
‘Rara avis,’ she said. ‘That’s what you are Frankie. A rara avis.’ She had pushed him out into the night then, to Uncle George and the waiting car.
Alf was that rarest of rarae aves of the underclass. He knew what he wanted, and what he wanted was to be comfortable. He wanted to not have to work too hard for that comfort.
See also for "rara avis"
Next best steps
Mini challenge
Unscramble this word: raraavis