MEMO

[fox]

to:  ALL ENGLISH SPEAKERS EVERYWHERE
from:  ME
re:  RAAAR

ATTENTION EVERYONE:

UNIQUE ≠ UNUSUAL.  THE WORD MEANS 'ONE OF A KIND' AND THAT IS ALL IT MEANS.

i'm sorry to raise my voice, but honestly.  this has gone on long enough.

Comments

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

i'm away from the oxford network at the moment, so i won't have that answer until the 10th of january. but look at the word itself: UNIque. uni=one. it's an absolute. it's like 'pregnant' or 'dead'. a woman is either pregnant or she isn't (the colloquial question 'how pregnant is she' meaning 'how long has she been pregnant', and the expression 'very pregnant' meaning 'close to term'); a person or animal is either dead or it isn't (it can be nearly dead, but it can't be more dead than dead); and a thing is either unique or it isn't.

the fact that scads of people don't know this doesn't make them right. look at 'imply' and 'infer'.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

What? Obviously I haven't been debating the fact that unique is binary, but rather your claim that unusual isn't a proper definition for unique.

Maybe you're right and the leading dictionaries I checked are all wrong, but I doubt it.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

i'm saying that because 'unique' is binary, 'unusual' is an imprecise and therefore incorrect definition of it. as jgesteve points out downthread, actually anything unique is naturally unusual. it's just that something that's one of a kind isn't just unusual; it's unique. conversely, using 'unique' to describe something that isn't one of a kind is wrong. it's like saying someone is a graduate of a university just because he used to be a student there and now he isn't. all graduates were once students, that is, but not everyone who was once a student is a graduate.

and dictionaries say a lot of things. they give 'flout' as one acceptable definition of 'flaunt'. doesn't make it right. :-)