exceptional vs thin on the ground

exceptional

adj
  • Forming an exception; not ordinary; uncommon; rare. 

  • Corresponding to something of lower dimension under a birational correspondence. 

  • Better than the average; superior due to exception or rarity. 

noun
  • An exception, or something having an exceptional value 

thin on the ground

adj
  • scarce, or difficult to find. 

How often have the words exceptional and thin on the ground occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )