[This term literally means rare bird but is also used in a more general sense, as in this example.]. ❚ John Feinstein is that rara avis of sports literature, a best-selling author. In fact, according to his publishers, his first book … A Season on the Brink, which recounted the sometimes unseemly adventures of coach Bobby Knight and his Indiana University basketball team, is nothing less than the “best-selling sports book of all time.” (Ron Fimrite, Books, Sports Illustrated, 10/14/1991, p. 6.)
On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln gave his second inaugural address before a multitude who braved the rain and the mud … to hear something out of the ordinary. No president had been re-elected since Andrew Jackson, so the very fact of a second inaugural was a rara avis in the [world] of political utterances. (Ted Widmer, “And the End Came,” The New York Times, 3/3/2015.)
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