Dictionary

geason en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /ˈɡeɪzən/
• /ˈɡɛzən/
• /ˈɡiːzən/

Etymology

From Middle English geson, gesene (“rare, scarce”), from Old English gǣsne (“deprived of, wanting, destitute, barren, sterile, dead”), from Proto-West Germanic *gaisnī (“barren, poor”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeh₂- (“to be gaping, yawn”). Cognate with Old High German geisini, keisini (“lack”), a noun, and more remotely with North Frisian gast (“barren”), Low German güst (“barren”).

Meanings

1. (dialectal, rare) Rare; uncommon; scarce.
   • Lectorius, friends are geason now-a-days, / And grow to fume before they taste the fire. 1594, Thomas Lodge, The Wounds of Civil War, act 2; republished as John Payne Collier, Robert Dodsley, Isaac Reed, editors, A Select Collection of Old Plays, volume 8, London: Septimus Prowett, 1825, page 32:
   • This white falcon rare and gaison, This bird shineth so bright. 16th century, Nicholas Udall, Falcon White:
   • Such as this Age, in which all good is geason, […] 1591, Edmund Spenser, Visions of the Worlds Vanitie:
   • […] ye shal finde many other word to rime with him, bycause such terminations are not geazon […] 1588, George Puttenham, “Of Proportion”, in The Arte of English Poesie; republished as George Gregory Smith, editor, Elizabethan Critical Essays, volume 2, Oxford University Press, 1937, page 119:
2. (UK, dialectal) Difficult to procure; scant; sparing.
3. (dialectal, rare) Unusual; wonderful.

Forms

Synonyms

infrequent (scarce) · raresome · selcouth