raree show

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rar·ee show

(râr′ē)

2. A street show.

[Alteration of rare + show.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

raree show

(ˈrɛəriː)

1. a street show or carnival

2. another name for peepshow

[C17: raree from rare¹]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

rar′ee show`

(ˈrɛər i)
n.

1. peep show.

2. a carnival or street show.

[1695–1705; allegedly imitative of a foreign pronoun of rare show]

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References in classic literature ?

Of course, the SUPREMELY aristocratic thing is to be entirely oblivious of the mire of rabble, with its setting; but sometimes a reverse course may be aristocratic to remark, to scan, and even to gape at, the mob (for preference, through a lorgnette), even as though one were taking the crowd and its squalor for a sort of raree show which had been organised specially for a gentleman's diversion.

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I seem to be standing before a sort of a raree show, watching the little men and little horses jerk before my eyes; and I often ask myself if everything is not an optical illusion.