seldom
Americanadverb
adjective
adverb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of seldom
First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English seldum, variant of seldan; cognate with German selten, Gothic silda-
Explanation
If you seldom see your grandmother because she lives far away, you might be grateful for the opportunity to visit her over the summer. Use the adjective seldom to refer to things that don't happen very often. A near synonym is rarely. Seldom is a Middle English word, from Old English seldum, a spelling alteration of seldan "strange, rare." In Old English, the spelling seldum came about by analogy with forms such as Old English hwilum "formerly, at one time," from hwil "time, while."
Vocabulary lists containing seldom
"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, Chapters 7–11
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The Crossover
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List 7
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They speak to me unself-consciously of their quest for beauty and goodness and truth—words seldom uttered within earshot on American campuses.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2026
World affairs seldom provide easy answers, however, and developments elsewhere have threatened to undermine his efforts to bring down fuel prices before they provide any political benefit.
From BBC ● Oct. 12, 2026
Real estate has always gone in cycles, boom followed by bust, and there is no particular reason to think “this time is different,” because in finance it seldom is.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 9, 2026
The 82-year-old is the brains behind the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a telescope embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice that detects neutrinos -- particles with almost no mass that seldom interact with other matter.
From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026
She slept on a couch in the room, waking often to renew the fire, to feed, lift, or wait upon the patient creature who seldom asked for anything, and ‘tried not to be a trouble’.
From "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
