1. = INFREQUENT a. 3.
1611. Florio, Infrequente, vnfrequent, seld, not frequent.
1712. Steele, Spect., No. 472, ¶ 1. This Misfortune is so very great and unfrequent, that one would think, an Establishment for all the Poor under it might be easily accomplished.
1793[?]. Coleridge, Songs of Pixies, iii. Beneath whose foliage pale Fann’d by the unfrequent gale We shield us from the Tyrant’s mid-day rage.
1824. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. I. 246. In those unfrequent frosts which destroy all vegetation.
1866. Howells, Venet. Life, v. 63. The blond, unfrequent beauty of the German aliens.
b. With preceding negative.
1665. Boyle, Occas. Refl., II. xiii. 230. As Deliriums and Phrensies are not unfrequent in Feavers.
1749. J. Mason, Numbers in Poet. Compositions, 57. This is a peculiar close, but not unfrequent in Milton.
1831. Scott, Ct. Rob., vii. A personage not so unfrequent in the streets of Constantinople as to excite any particular notice.
1871. Mill, Pol. Econ. (ed. 7), 200. There is, however, a not unfrequent case, in which the purpose of the borrower is different.
† 2. = INFREQUENT a. 2. Obs.–1
1618. Rowlands, Sacred Mem., 24. This place is solitary, vnfrequent; We are belated.
