Unique

Unique

Adjective · /juːˈniːk/ · being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else

Definition

Unique means being the only one of its kind — there is nothing else exactly like it. In its strictest, most precise sense, unique is an absolute: something either is unique or it is not. There are no degrees — you cannot say very unique or quite unique any more than you can say very singular or quite one-of-a-kind. The Rosetta Stone is unique. A fingerprint is unique. In formal and academic writing, unique preserves this absolute sense. In everyday speech, unique has softened into an intensifier meaning unusually distinctive, which purists resist but language has accepted.

Origin

Unique comes from the French unique, itself from the Latin unicus — meaning one and only, sole, unparalleled. Unicus derives from unus, one. The word entered English in the seventeenth century, initially in the absolute sense. By the nineteenth century, writers were already stretching it informally to mean merely unusual. The absolutist argument — that unique cannot be modified — has been debated in English grammar and style guides ever since, with careful writers still preferring the strict sense.