"Very unique." The sight of these two words makes me, and most of my set, cringe.
Should it?
Let's think about why adding qualifiers to unique is so resisted a practice. It means one-of-a-kind, apparently, and naturally it is absurd to think of something being one-of-a-kind to a greater or lesser degree. It's binary, and you can't qualify something binary.
This is logical. But I think it might be more logic than language as a practice can reasonably accommodate. We almost never fully describe situations; sentences are like small boats of data that float on seas of context. Why does context apparently not matter for "unique"?
Take the word "everyone," for example. It doesn't mean "every human being alive or dead"; its scope implicitly scales up or down depending on the situation. It might mean "everyone in this conference room," "all my family and friends," "everyone in this university," "everyone in this country," or import more complicated meanings, like "everyone who I define to be reasonable enough to take part in this conversation."
In the same way, "one of a kind," implies a universe of entities out of which the predicate is the only one - and the possible variation in that universe of entities makes it no longer a binary proposition. If you say a worker's skills are "unique," you probably mean "within this company" or "within this industry"; there are probably plenty of people out there with identical skills, but who are not available for the same job for any of a number of reasons. A historical artifact in a museum might be labeled "unique" even when it's known to be one of a series, because the others have all passed into obscure private collections, making it vanishingly unlikely that the museum-goer reading the display will ever see another like it.
In this way, "unique" is just as context-dependent as any other adjective. And all the above assumes that "unique" is completely equivalent to "one-of-a-kind," which should not be taken as given. Etymologically, Latin unicus is unus "one" plus an adjectivalizing suffix. Arguably, even back when it was coined, it didn't mean "one" - if so, why not just say "one"? - but something having the fuzzy quality of there being only one, which could be taken in many directions; and indeed, a glance through Latin dictionaries on Google Books finds it also had transferred meanings like "notable," "beloved," "singular," and even "uncommon." In this way, "unique" should be understood as a word with its own meaning, not the same as "one-of-a-kind," and there is nothing sacred about its original derivation.
Finally, some historical perspective on the word in English. According to the OED it was first used in 1609, in the sense of "sole," but (perhaps after becoming archaic) was "readopted" from French in the late 18th century in the more elaborate sense of "standing alone, unparalleled." The OED mentions "a tendency to take the wider meaning of 'uncommon, unusual, remarkable,' and that "[t]he usage in the comparative and superlative, and with advs. as absolutely, most, quite, thoroughly, totally, etc., has been objected to as tautological" - followed by a citation from 1809 qualified by "thoroughly"! It seems the "misuse" of the word is almost as venerable as the word itself, as is pedantic objection to that practice. (And that was the same generation of grammarians, I suspect, that instituted those meaningless, reactionary bans as on split infinitives, "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, and prepositions at the end of sentences.)
I still find "very unique" clumsy due to my upbringing, and enough people feel the same way that I will keep editing it out when I see it. But "fairly unique," "relatively unique," and other such qualified phrases convey a real meaning, and I may be more lenient when I see them. Above all, we should strive to enjoy and participate in linguistic change, not look for opportunities to turn up our noses at it.
This post was composed in the spirit of Stephen Fry's manifesto, which I recommend to everyone, and which is embedded below.
(Final note: Truly binary adjectives do exist, like "pregnant" - but that has a clearly defined referent, an individual.)
Should it?
Let's think about why adding qualifiers to unique is so resisted a practice. It means one-of-a-kind, apparently, and naturally it is absurd to think of something being one-of-a-kind to a greater or lesser degree. It's binary, and you can't qualify something binary.
This is logical. But I think it might be more logic than language as a practice can reasonably accommodate. We almost never fully describe situations; sentences are like small boats of data that float on seas of context. Why does context apparently not matter for "unique"?
Take the word "everyone," for example. It doesn't mean "every human being alive or dead"; its scope implicitly scales up or down depending on the situation. It might mean "everyone in this conference room," "all my family and friends," "everyone in this university," "everyone in this country," or import more complicated meanings, like "everyone who I define to be reasonable enough to take part in this conversation."
In the same way, "one of a kind," implies a universe of entities out of which the predicate is the only one - and the possible variation in that universe of entities makes it no longer a binary proposition. If you say a worker's skills are "unique," you probably mean "within this company" or "within this industry"; there are probably plenty of people out there with identical skills, but who are not available for the same job for any of a number of reasons. A historical artifact in a museum might be labeled "unique" even when it's known to be one of a series, because the others have all passed into obscure private collections, making it vanishingly unlikely that the museum-goer reading the display will ever see another like it.
In this way, "unique" is just as context-dependent as any other adjective. And all the above assumes that "unique" is completely equivalent to "one-of-a-kind," which should not be taken as given. Etymologically, Latin unicus is unus "one" plus an adjectivalizing suffix. Arguably, even back when it was coined, it didn't mean "one" - if so, why not just say "one"? - but something having the fuzzy quality of there being only one, which could be taken in many directions; and indeed, a glance through Latin dictionaries on Google Books finds it also had transferred meanings like "notable," "beloved," "singular," and even "uncommon." In this way, "unique" should be understood as a word with its own meaning, not the same as "one-of-a-kind," and there is nothing sacred about its original derivation.
Finally, some historical perspective on the word in English. According to the OED it was first used in 1609, in the sense of "sole," but (perhaps after becoming archaic) was "readopted" from French in the late 18th century in the more elaborate sense of "standing alone, unparalleled." The OED mentions "a tendency to take the wider meaning of 'uncommon, unusual, remarkable,' and that "[t]he usage in the comparative and superlative, and with advs. as absolutely, most, quite, thoroughly, totally, etc., has been objected to as tautological" - followed by a citation from 1809 qualified by "thoroughly"! It seems the "misuse" of the word is almost as venerable as the word itself, as is pedantic objection to that practice. (And that was the same generation of grammarians, I suspect, that instituted those meaningless, reactionary bans as on split infinitives, "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, and prepositions at the end of sentences.)
I still find "very unique" clumsy due to my upbringing, and enough people feel the same way that I will keep editing it out when I see it. But "fairly unique," "relatively unique," and other such qualified phrases convey a real meaning, and I may be more lenient when I see them. Above all, we should strive to enjoy and participate in linguistic change, not look for opportunities to turn up our noses at it.
This post was composed in the spirit of Stephen Fry's manifesto, which I recommend to everyone, and which is embedded below.
(Final note: Truly binary adjectives do exist, like "pregnant" - but that has a clearly defined referent, an individual.)
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