unique

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French unique. Doublet of any.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /juːˈniːk/, /jəˈniːk/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːk

Adjective

unique (comparative uniquer or more unique, superlative uniquest or most unique)

1. (not comparable) Being the only one of its kind; unequaled, unparalleled or unmatched.

   Synonyms: one of a kind, sui generis, singular

   Every person has a unique life, therefore every person has a unique journey.

   • 1920, Robert W. Lawson, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, translation of original by Albert Einstein:

     Perhaps the reader will wonder why we have placed our " beings " on a sphere rather than on another closed surface. But this choice has its justification in the fact that, of all closed surfaces, the sphere is unique in possessing the property that all points on it are equivalent.

   • 1941, Allen v. Walt Disney:

     3. Both were written and published with the same unique chorus structure;
     4. Both compositions were written and published with the same unique harmonic structure;

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:

     ‘ […]  There's every Staffordshire crime-piece ever made in this cabinet, and that's unique. The Van Hoyer Museum in New York hasn't that very rare second version of Maria Marten's Red Barn over there, nor the little Frederick George Manning—he was the criminal Dickens saw hanged on the roof of the gaol in Horsemonger Lane, by the way—’

   • 1978, Jimmy Carter, Proclamation 4611:

     Admiralty Island contains unique resources of scientific interest which need protection to assure continued opportunities for study.

   • 1998, Paul M. Edwards, The Korean War: An Annotated Bibliography‎, Greenwood Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 114:

     A very interesting history of United Nations at war in Korea, done in an unique question and answer style.

   • 2002, The American Practical Navigator:

     GPS assigns a unique C/A code and a unique P code to each satellite.

2. Of a feature, such that only one holder has it.
3. Particular, characteristic.
   • 1999, Harry J. Cargas, Problems Unique to the Holocaust‎:
4. (sometimes proscribed) Of a rare quality, unusual.
   • 1950, J.D. Salinger, For Esmé—With Love and Squalor:

     And as I look back, it seems to me that we were fairly unique, the sixty of us, in that there wasn’t one good mixer in the bunch.

Usage notes

• The comparative and superlative forms uniquer or more unique and uniquest or most unique, as well as the use of unique with modifiers as in fairly unique and very unique, are sometimes criticised, with the reasoning that either something is unique or it is not. These modified senses of “unique”, however, have been in use since at least as far back as the 18th century, with “unique” taking its common secondary sense of “uncommon, unusual, remarkable”.

Derived terms

Related terms

• unicity
• one-of-a-kind
• inimitable

Translations

Noun

unique (plural uniques)

1. A thing without a like; something unequalled or unparallelled; one of a kind.
   • a. 1859, Thomas De Quincey, Language:

     The phoenix, the unique of birds.

   • 2020, John Harris, Exploring Roguelike Games:

     […] uniques of the game, Sauron and Morgoth, are found on levels 99 and 100 of the dungeon respectively, […]

Translations

Further reading

• “unique”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “unique”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “unique” in Roget's Thesaurus, T. Y. Crowell Co., 1911.

French

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin ūnicus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /y.nik/

• audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ik

Adjective

unique (plural uniques)

1. unique
2. only

Derived terms

Related terms

• un

Descendants

• → Danish: unik
• → Dutch: uniek
  • → Indonesian: unik
• → English: unique
• → Norwegian Bokmål: unik
• → Norwegian Nynorsk: unik
• → Swedish: unik
• → Turkish: ünik

Further reading

• “unique”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.