ˈrare-ripe, a. and n. dial. and U.S.
[f. rare a.3 + ripe.]
a. adj. Rathe-ripe. b. n. An early fruit or vegetable. Also transf. c. attrib. Of the colour of a peach called the rare-ripe.
| 1799 Washington Writ. (1893) XIV. 231 All that part..is to be planted with rare-ripe corn. 1799 S. Freeman Town Officer 162 Onions for shipment in bunches shall weigh as follows, viz. rare-ripes two and a half lbs. 1860 O. W. Holmes Elsie V. (1861) 75 Brunette, with a rareripe flush in her cheeks. 1890 Lowell Poems II. 181 President Lincoln said of a precocious boy that ‘he was a rareripe’. |