Word: rara
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Rara avis....what he would call "all interesting piece of neckwear" piece of neckwear" flows.... sport shirt.... loose coat as liable not to match the lower half.... cigarette holder...corner of handkerchief protruding from lower coat pocket.... the eye goes down the full length and then back up, finally resting where it began, on the long locks in pompadour, slightly out of alignment...
...between, they might be discounted, but many cases have recently come up where the tradition of "majesty" as a necessary attribute to law seems to have been disregarded. The Tennessee anti-evolution law, brought to light a year and a half ago, might be dismissed as a rara avis if it were not for the fact that the same law was recently brought up in a bill in Minnesota to introduce it there. The State of Nebraska considered the advisability of jailing "sheiks" and "vamps". Now a proposal to prohibit pie is before the legislature of Kansas...
Even Miss Saxon, however, wins only second honors for the evening in competition with Mr. Harry Puck. For Mr. Puck is indeed a rara avis, a musical comedy hero whom the male members of the audience can with equanimity listen to their female companions admire. Besides failing to arouse that on-well-it-takes-all-kinds-of-people-to-make-a-world feeling so common in the contemplation of musical comedy heroes, Mr. Puck sings most satisfactorily, maltreats a piano outrageously, even to the extent of landing on the keys in a nose dive while in the throes...
From his own pulpit, the new leader looked upon the faces of ardent friends. Some had known him from childhood. For Dr. Coffin?a descendant of Commodore Vanderbilt?is that rara avis, a genealogical Manhattanite. Graduated from Yale at the age of 20 with highest honors, he struck out from the ancestral paths, plunged into the ministry, and was soon conducting services in a shoddy room above a fishmarket. His first pulpit was an unadorned wooden plank. His call to the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church followed years of slumming. This Church soon came to have the largest Presbyterian congregation...
Senator James A. Reed?that rara avis a Democratic irreconcilable? proposed and the Republican majority assented. Several weeks ago Senator Reed presented a resolution, one of many, for an investigation. The resolution lay contently in the Committee on Audit and Expenses. But Reed, whose anti-League of Nations activities had moved former President Wilson to suggest that he be not reelected (and who nevertheless was reelected in 1922 by an increased majority), had resources. His anti-League proclivities gave him a certain standing in the Republican camp...