What single word can replace 'nearly never' in 'It nearly never occurs'?

Question

I am talking about an event that is nearly never observed, but I don't want to say "it does not happen" but this would not be correct. Is it possible to write

It nearly never occurs.

with a single word for "nearly never".

I've found "almost never" could be a good choice, but I would like a single word if this exists.

context : Fires "nearly never" occur more than once in the same year.

EDIT :

I consider that fires are already a "rare event". A second fire in a place that has already burnt (therefore with usually no more inflammable substances) should therefore not occur. However, it does sometime occur (with a very small probability) when the first fire did not burn everything and there is a new start of fire and the external conditions are favourable to fire etc. Hence my quest for a "nearly never" word, which I didn't like.

I had several answer and I thank all who answered. However, most answers provide more than one solution so I cannot make the difference between good "answers" and good "solutions" based on the vote. I personnally see three options :

option 1 : forget about using a single word and use "almost never"

option 2 : use "rarely" (voted up in the comment, voted down in one answer (or maybe the answer was voted down because it was too short) because almost never is too strong. But as I said I am looking for something strong, maybe something between "almost never" which seems to be used for probability of "0" and rarely (probability of 0.0001). In my case it is like a probability of 0.000000001.

option 3 : use scarcely, which is the closest match to "almost never". @helix mentioned it and the definition seemed appropriate in my case.

Answer 1

Not one word, but this phrase is more natural than saying nearly never.:

• Almost never

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One word:

• Hardly

  Scarcely (used to qualify a statement by saying that it is true to an insignificant degree). Also used as hardly ever.

• Scarcely or Barely

  Only just; almost not:

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Usage graph specific to your context:

Answer 2

Exactly what StoneyB and helix suggests. A single word for that could be...

Seldom, Rarely, Scarcely or Barely (#2).

Just to add the preference of writers. An interesting nGram suggests the use of 'rarely', 'barely', 'seldom' and 'scarcely' in that order.

Other synonyms (check out the color/shading) here on thesaurus.

Answer 3

Use "rarely ever." The extra "ever" makes the "rarely" much stronger, but not as far as "almost never".

Answer 4

Interestingly, in mathematics "almost surely" and "almost never" are very formally defined terms - Wikipedia - though they imply something far more rare than what you're getting at.

"Fires rarely occur more than once in the same year" is more correct than "Fires almost never occur once in the same year" - I can find a handful of cases searching Google, "almost never," when used formally, is more appropriate for things like "The second law of thermodynamics is almost never violated in a macroscopic scale", since it can be violated, just with 0 probability.

Answer 5

As you've already gathered, nearly never should immediately be discounted in favour of almost never, as a two word solution.

Of the single word options suggested so far, particularly in the context of the sample usage ("fires almost never occur more than once in the same year") you give in your latest edit, seldom and rarely stand head and shoulders above scarcely and barely as drop in replacements for almost never, indeed the latter pair are very awkward and arguably invalid in your sentence without themselves being converted to two word expressions - scarcely ever and barely ever. Seldom and rarely could both be given increased emphasis by appending ever (though defeating your object), but work well enough on their own.

So stick with seldom or rarely if you really want a single word replacement, but I wouldn't say that either conveys quite the sense of infrequency as almost never, and I wouldn't see any need of my own to replace that with a single word at all.

Answer 6

The word seldom can be used instead of the words nearly never in a sentence without changing the meaning of the sentence.

It seldom occurs.

The word ever can be added after seldom in this sentence. Although this would not be a single word replacement for nearly never, it would be grammatically correct and it also sounds much better in my opinion.

It seldom ever occurs.

Answer 7

infrequently or occasionally are about as strong a wording as I can get.