Today's Word
"Unique"
unique \yu-NEEK\ (adjective) - Sole, one of a kind, without equal or match. "Going out with Mary Ellen to the county sausage-eating contest was an almost unique experience in my life." Today's word comes to us, as so many others, from Latin "unicus" via Old French. The underlying root is oi-no- from which English "one" is derived and the reason the article "a" sometimes has an [n] in it (an apple), is that it was originally "one" before all nouns. The Latin variant un-us "one" appears in "union," "unite," "unit," "unanimous," "unicorn," and "universe." People often complain about the (mis)use of this word in the comparative (more unique, most unique). Many dictionaries claim that this reflects a new meaning of the word: "rare, unusual." In fact, the confusion is produced by a peculiarity of the comparative degree of adjectives with a fixed, absolute sense like "unique." Comparison is allowed with these adjectives but the meaning is "more nearly X" ("more nearly unique") and not simply "more X." Notice this is what "more infinite," "more absent," even "fuller" mean. "Fuller" doesn't mean "more than full" but "more nearly full." So, "unique" has not taken on a new meaning; the comparative has, offering a different interpretation for absolute adjectives.
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