Where does “rarity” come from?
Rarity comes from English rare, from Latin rāritas, from Latin radere meaning to scrape or scratch, prefixed with re-, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European h₁er-.
rarity (English): A measure of the scarcity of an object; Thinness;...
Definitions
- A measure of the scarcity of an object; Thinness;...
Ancestry of “rarity”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Middle French | rarité | — |
| 2 | Latin | rāritās | looseness, thinness, the state of being loose, not dense |
| 3 | Latin | -tās | ty, -dom, -hood, -ness, -ship |
| 4 | Proto-Indo-European | -teh₂ts | Used to form nouns representing state of being |
| 5 | Proto-Indo-European | -teh₂ | Used to form nouns representing state of being |
| 6 | Proto-Indo-European | -tós | Creates verbal adjectives from verb stems |