Cadillac and 3-wheelers

Dan McGrath filted:

On 23 Feb 2009 12:46:23 -0800, R H Draney
wrote:

Murray Arnow filted:

Dan McGrath wrote:

There is no such word as "rare".


Daniel, you keep insisting that there is no word such as "rare." If you
ever gave an explanation for this, I missed it. You and I both know that
"rare is in reputable English-dictionaries, so I think the weight of
this claim is upon you to prove.

This coping mechanism may in part be Dan's response to my suggestion that there
are *two* such words that just happen to be spelled and pronounced the same....r

So you mean, when you referred to "two words" you were merely
*suggesting* that I think of "rare" that way?

Pretty much...it's possible to think of it as either two words with convergent
spelling or one word with two origins...I thought it might help ease your
discomfort over the situation to train your mind to prefer the former
perspective...a sort of verbal Necker-cube illusion....

Actually, I probably *did* think of "rare" as more or less two
different words for several years. Until Feb. 2004, that is. It was
then that I discovered that several correlations existed between
"rare" ( L. "rarus") and "rare" ( OE "hrer"). And, because of this,
I began to think of these as the same word -- I mentally married them,
so to speak. But I guess I'm no longer sure whether those
correlations make sense to me, and that's why I've been having trouble
with "rare". I certainly don't want to divorce the two "rare"s,
though.

Perhaps a trial separation is in order?...r


--
"You got Schadenfreude on my Weltanschauung!"
"You got Weltanschauung in my Schadenfreude!"

Dan McGrath wrote:
On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:10:48 GMT, the Omrud
wrote:

Again, I'm not convinced there. How is "a rare talent" different from
"an unusual talent"? I see them as being the same.
Not so much different from "unusual" as from "uncommon". It's a very
subtle extra meaning which gives a feeling of approval to the talent;
it's not just that there are few people with this talent, but also that
the talent is in some way special.

Sorry. I see "rare" and "uncommon" as having the same meaning in that
context. To me, anything that can be called an "uncommon talent" can
also be called a "rare talent".

Fair enough - that won't cause any misunderstandings.

--
David