rara avis
\ʁa.ʁa a.vis\
The verdict
“rara avis” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Personne ou chose rare, et conséquemment très recherchée.
Corpus desk
Index FR-rara-avis · rara avis · French
rara avis · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "R" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | rara avis |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ʁa.ʁa a.vis\ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « rara avis » en français
Rare enough to double-check
rara avis is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \ʁa.ʁa a.vis\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Personne ou chose rare, et conséquemment très recherchée.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for rara avis, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is rara avis, spelled R-A-R-A- -A-V-I-S.
Definition
- 1Personne ou chose rare, et conséquemment très recherchée.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how rara avis appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Quant au pneumatique qui ne crève pas, c’est un rara avis qui n’est pas encore sur le point d'être mis au jour et qui fera certainement la fortune de son auteur.
« Rara avis,» nous répétera M. Goyau, quand nous nous mettrons à la recherche d'un ouvrier intelligent. Hélas ! oui, nous ne pouvons faire moins que d'en convenir. — Avec lui, nous nous écrierons : Rara avis !!…
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.