exceptional vs red-letter

exceptional

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

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

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

noun
  • An exception, or something having an exceptional value 

red-letter

adj
  • Particularly significant or positive. 

How often have the words exceptional and red-letter occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )