“seldom”

[Jka]

Could you tell me if it is right that the word “seldom” is archaic and what would be better to use? Perhaps “rarely”?
Thank you in advance.

[danmahaffey]

I would seldom say that. In fact I would rarely, if ever, say that. :)

Seldom means not so frequent. Rarely means even less frequent than seldom. How did you come to think that seldom was archaic?

[Jka]

Actually, it was my English teacher who came to think so. I guess she’s used to hearing “seldom” really rarely. She also claimed that “many” had a negative meaning “too many”. I just wonder why that Englishman she was talking to considered the phrase “There’re many foreign students in Cambridge” to be offensive. It seems to me that sometimes a word can mean different things for different people. For instance, some people associate “irony” with sarcasm while others associate it only with humour.

[Pete]

Could you tell me if it is right that the word “seldom” is archaic and what would be better to use? Perhaps “rarely”?
Thank you in advance.
One explanation for thinking that "seldom" is rare and archaic is that it does have a rare and archaic use as an adjective; the common use is as an adverb. Some dictionaries still list the use as an adjective and explicitly mark that use as archaic. An example of that use (which I think I have never heard or read myself) might be:
- A brilliant sunset is a seldom sight in that cloudy climate.

[Rusty]

Actually, it was my English teacher who came to think so. I guess she’s used to hearing “seldom” really rarely. She also claimed that “many” had a negative meaning “too many”. I just wonder why that Englishman she was talking to considered the phrase “There’re many foreign students in Cambridge” to be offensive. It seems to me that sometimes a word can mean different things for different people. For instance, some people associate “irony” with sarcasm while others associate it only with humour.
"Too many" might be taken negatively as it means more than enough or more than is wanted. I don't see how “There’re many foreign students in Cambridge” could be offensive.

[danmahaffey]

All adjectives are evaluative and involve judgments.

Suppose 500 students from outside the country attend Cambridge. I could interpret the number of foreign students to be many, while another could assess the same number to be insignificant.

If you were a sensitive about the topic, you might not like my use of many, and consider my statement offensive.

This is not really an English language matter, but rather a social matter. But it does underline an important point about adjectives. Even though we have dictionaries with their definitions, adjectives (and adverbs, too) do not have rigorous and absolute meanings. The meanings in the dictionaries are generally recognized as standard, but the words are actually quite flexible. Nouns and verbs are a little better behaved.

. . . . . . . .

Irony is often confused with sarcasm, and can refer both to humor and to non-humorous events. Sarcasm has an element of meanness to it, and can only be written or spoken, while irony can be both commentary and events. More biting humor and cutting remarks are probably sarcasm, rather than irony.

Dictionaries give good definitions of each word, but the key to irony is found in its word history. It originates from a Greek word that means "feigned ignorance," or in more basic English, "playing dumb." In Greek theater, the audience sometimes was made aware of a situation that was kept hidden from the actors. The audience would watch as the story unfolded and the actors unknowingly fell into the fate that awaited them. The audience saw it coming but the actors didn't. This was the birth of irony.

I hope all this helps.

[Jka]

Thank you very much danmahaffey, Pete, Rusty.