rarely
rare·ly/ˈɹɛəɹli/adverb
rarely is spelled R-A-R-E-L-Y, 2 syllables: rare·ly. The wrong spelling people search most is rarley: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 25 of all searches for the word. Rarely is an adverb meaning “Not occurring at a regular interval; seldom; not often”.
How do you spell rarely?
Rarely is spelled R-A-R-E-L-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 25 of the searches for rarely in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
What does rarely mean?
adverb
- 1
Not occurring at a regular interval; seldom; not often.
We rarely go to the theatre.
- 2
Unusually well; excellently.
After all the schooling, I can finally write rarely now.
- 3
To a rare degree; very.
I became a rarely good judge of the best in modern painting.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce rarely?
- UK /ˈɹɛːli/
- US /ˈɹɛəɹli/
- /ɹɛli/
Rarely has 2 syllables, split rare·ly in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-rarely.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of rarely
- rarelier comparative
- more rarely comparative
- rareliest superlative
- most rarely superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is rarely?
Rarely appears 26 times per million words in written English, the 3,479th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Rarely in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense not occurring at a regular interval:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does rarely come from?
From rare + -ly.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).