| 词组 | rarely ever |
| 释义 | rarely ever Rarely ever is one of several intensive forms of the adverb rarely. Bryant 1962 calls it an established colloquial idiom, which agrees with our evidence. The idiom is possibly a telescoped form of rarely if ever, an intensified form of rarely that is more common in print, but the historical evidence is against this conjecture. OED evidence dates rarely ever from 1694; rarely if ever from 1756. Rarely ever is used in both British and American English: • ... and the thieves are rarely ever caught —magistrate quoted in Ronald Blythe, Akenfield, 1969 • I rarely ever think about the past —Edmund Wilson, New Yorker, 12 June 1971 The longer intensive forms of rarely include rarely if at all (cited in Bryant), rarely or never (Bryant and OED), and rarely if ever, the best-attested version in our files. It is used with or without commas: • In all the hullabaloo about Justice Douglas we rarely, if ever, told our readers ... —Theodore Bernstein, Winners & Sinners, 30 Apr. 1970 • ... says it rarely if ever sees a repeat shoplifting offender —Glynn Mapes, Security World, May 1968 The criticism of rarely ever takes some strange forms. One critic calls it "wordy, unidiomatic." How a 300-year-old idiom can be unidiomatic he does not say. As to wordiness, this critic suggests you replace rarely ever with hardly ever, rarely, if ever, or rarely or never. Criticism of rarely ever can be ignored; Bryant has the right idea. In ordinary discursive prose, however, rarely is almost always used alone. |
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