Talk:unique

Can there be more than one "unique"?

Jerry Miller and I are discussing whether "unique" can refer to exclusion from a small set, or whether when some people try to say that their definition is correct, and they use references such as dictionaries, they usually are trying to enforce majority or elitist views. The debates about Black English and then Ebonics exemplify how semantics can become political.

For "unique," its use to indicate rarity rather than singularity is disputed according to:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unique

I should note that Will said "a unique answer counting only common uncapitalized words." I added the "one" to get "one unique." However, to say that a problem has "two unique" answers would not offend my sense of semantics. I think that authors, especially of puzzles, have a duty to make their meaning clear (I guess poets have a license if they want to invite multiple meanings). I see no problem with adding redundant words, especially if some people may misunderstand without the redundancy.

I thusly apologize that you had to read one unnecessary word.

Rrenner 16:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Jerry's quote above invokes what is usually called the "etymological fallacy". The idea that each word must have only one definition, and that that definition must match the origin or etymology of the word, runs totally counter to basic linguistic principles and would make almost every English sentence full of "errors". Self-styled grammarians only invoke this idea when they're trying to criticize some disputed usage that is a shibboleth. For instance, I've never seen any of these people say that "December" should only be used for the 10th month because "dec" means "ten".

What about the book titled, "Totally Unique Thoughts." This suggests that there could be, for example, "mildly unique thoughts." I think the disputed definition deserves a more through usage note saying that "unique" is used so ubiquitously in this sense that there only snoots think it's disputed. 70.17.109.5 04:11, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Do you know what saying always pissed me off? "Everyone's unique!" Now that's a saying that really puts the moron into oxymoron. Of course not everyone's unique, that would utterly defeat the aim of uniqueness. --86.130.132.103 15:12, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Everyone IS unique!  Each person may be put into a group so exactly defined that only that person fits into that group. That makes the very act of grouping them that way pointless, and that's why uniqueness has no absolute meaning. It's only a relative term meaning special. By insisting that something is absolutely unique, you are deliberately putting it into a mental box by itself. But don't pretend that you are adding to that thing's specialness by so doing.  Uniqueness is as arbitrary and subjective as the mental process of sorting and grouping. Benster 22:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

It works if you parse it as "Humanity (collectively) is unique", i.e. there are no other comparable life-forms. I doubt anybody ever meant that by it, though. Heh. Equinox ◑ 15:15, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually humanity, which is a species, shares many characteristics with other species. Humanity is widely spread, though not universally, over the globe, just like other species. All samples share distinctive traits, they inter-mate, they have sub-species or races.  So, humanity is not unique...at least not THAT unique! Benster 22:47, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

It's a SUPERLATIVE, damn it!! A synonym of "unique" is "one of a kind". Try saying "most one of a kind" in place of "most unique" and hear how nonsensical it sounds. Something is either one of a kind or it is not. The word "unique" is never used with a modifier; if you see it being modified, it is a grammatic error. There can be sentence constructions where "unique" appears to be modified, but careful parsing of the structure will reveal that it is not the target of the modifier. For example:

This Web site has the most unique visitors.

Here, the word "most" is referring to the visitor count, not the word "unique", meaning that repeat visitors to the Web site are not being counted, only those who appear once and never again. Although at first blush it appears to be a grammatic error, it is not.
Be suspicious of persons who promote alternative views on the use of superlatives: If you probe a little deeper, you'll probably find someone who was asleep during English classes in grade school and high school and is too pig-headed to admit that he is just plain wrong on the subject.
Quicksilver^@ 15:00, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Funny: "One of a kind" actually sounds not unique at all, for example one can of Bud, no particular one, out of a case of beer!  But if we mean the "only one of its kind" or sui generis, then that depends on the kind, which is a group created by human arbitration, a subjective thing which we can design to have as many or as few samples in it, according to our needs. But putting any one thing into a group of which it is the only member is pointless and phony. You may as well just consider the thing itself. Benster 22:45, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

People asleep in English class... like professional grammarians? You may want to read the lengthy article for "unique" in the MWDoEU. "Unique" has been modified in degree since it first became widely used in the English language. MW says: "The evidence allows several definitive conclusions. Those who insist that unique cannot be modified by such adverbs such as more, most, and very are clearly wrong; our evidence shows that it can be and frequently is modified by such adverbs. Those who believe that the use of such modifiers threatens to weaken the "having no like or equal" sense of unique are also wrong; our evidence shows that the "having no like or equal" sense is flourishing. And those who regard the use of unique to mean "unusual" or "distinctive" as a modern corruption are emphatically wrong: unique has been used with those meanings for well over a hundred years." Agarvin 00:44, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the use of comparative unique is down to misreading of "most unique visitors". Evidence? Equinox ◑ 17:23, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

It's such contributors as you, Agarvin and Equinox, that drag collaborative efforts like Wiktionary into the gutter and make it useless as an authoritative reference. Go ahead, drive on the wrong side of the road against traffic, if you like; after all, it's just a minor difference of opinion.Quicksilver^@ 18:47, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

The word has no absolute meaning looked at reasonably with a careful, semantic view. It can only be used usefully, in a relative way, as a synonym for rare. Samuel Johnson thought the same way and he has some credence in the dictionary world, no?

Benster 22:51, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Twelve years later, still proudly driving this collaborative effort into the gutter. What are you doing, Quicksilver? Equinox ◑ 21:18, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

No. No more credence than anyone else, since he's no more unique than anyone else who speaks this language. All the arguments above FOR "unique" being comparable appear to be just anecdotal claims about the misuse of the word being common. By that logic, common misuse of ANY word is no long "misuse" - it simply expands the definition of that word to the point that a word cannot be misused, and the term "definition" loses all definition.

So a word (like unique) either HAS a meaning/definition, or it DOESN'T. For language to be useful at all, words MUST have definitions. And the definition of "unique" (based on its etymology) is "the only one like it(self)". To argue that many people misusing it for a long time makes all of them & that use "correct" is to argue that ANY use of ANY word is correct - just maybe ahead of its time. Which makes all language meaningless. There is either one, or there are more than one. Period - there is no other possibility, and no degree of one-ness. The same argument can be made for "singular" and "plural" - a singular word is the only singular to any degree; a plural word referring to 2 things is not "more singular" than a plural word referring to 1,832,064 things. If there are more than one (even only 2), then none of them are unique; and no unique thing can be more-unique than any other unique thing.

Does this mean we must crush anyone who misuses "unique" until it never happens again? No more than we must crush anyone who misuses "twerking" or any other word. But in this forum, the goal is definition. And there is a unique definition of "unique", so that's what should be published here. Not all the historical & current MISuses of it. Steve8394 (talk) 16:39, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Unique is not comparable. "(comparative uniquer or more unique, superlative uniquest or most unique)" should be removed and definition 4, with the Salinger quote should be noted as misuse, not "(sometimes proscribed)". It makes no sense to use the word this way. I say that "irregardlessly". Wastrel Way (talk) 14:49, 5 February 2024 (UTC) Eric

Thanks. You're wrong. It stays. Equinox ◑ 16:01, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

"not typical, unusual"

By the mid-19th century UNIQUE had developed a wider meaning, "not typical, unusual," and it is in this wider sense that it is compared: 
The foliage on the late-blooming plants is more unique than that on the earlier varieties.
https://www.wordreference.com/definition/unique

--Backinstadiums (talk) 19:36, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Three quotations using "an unique"?

The quotations are real, but "an unique" is rare and all sources I can find say that "a unique" is correct. Should we remove some or all of these examples? Google Ngram Viewer shows "a unique" 154 times more frequently for the most recent (2019) data. SchreiberBike (talk) 23:17, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

These same three quotations are also used at an.SchreiberBike (talk) 23:26, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike I believe I had added some or all of the examples you mention. Here's what I would say: if you feel so inclined, remove anything you think is a 'bad example' from the entry page itself. However, I have put all the examples onto the Citations pages (Citations:unique and Citations:an) so that interested persons can kind of get an awareness or grasp that yeah, sometimes, there is an "an" before "unique" or similar. I would say try to keep things consistent with Wiktionary:Descriptivism in your own mind, but I don't see what's wrong with deleting from the entry page itself some or all examples of something that is actually bizarre. The Citations pages are kind of like the deep, dark pit into which everything that could be construed as in any way possibly legitimate for the ultimate idealized form of a perfect descriptivist dictionary is cast and kept, and I would say that these cites you mention while possibly untoward for the entry page itself definitely fall within the scope of the Citations page. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:13, 29 September 2022 (UTC) (Modified)

@Geographyinitiative As it is now, "a unique" is used in the entry four times and "an unique" is used three times. I propose eliminating two of the uses of "an unique" from here and all three from an to make it a little closer to 1:154. If there's no objection I'll do that in week or so. SchreiberBike (talk) 02:38, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

I have no objection. You must do what you feel is right, of course. Also, you may want to remove the 'an' example at UFO (I have moved a copy of it to Citations). --Geographyinitiative (talk) 07:12, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Done as described above. Thank you. SchreiberBike (talk) 20:23, 9 October 2022 (UTC)