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Old 05.24.2006, 03:21 PM   #15
noumenal
expwy. to yr skull
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
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"A glance at the uni- in unique will tell you that it has something to do with "one". Something unique stands alone. There is only one of it. Not some. Not a few. Not a couple. One! So, why is it that we hear so many people saying that such-and-such is "very unique"? A few weeks ago, we heard an art critic on the radio describing an exhibition. Having referred to one exhibit as "unique" he was compelled to characterize the next as "even more unique". What, in the name of Tiglath Pileser IV and his sacred choir of lisping bats, does "even more only one of it" mean?

The word unique belongs to a class of words called "absolutes". Other absolutes are infinite, dead and pregnant. The property which all these words share is that it is illogical to apply an adjective to them. Attempting to do so is called "qualifying an absolute". When we consider why the phrases "very infinite" and "slightly dead" sound silly we see that "qualifying an absolute" is not so much a grammatical error as it is a logical one. If it were merely a matter of grammar there could be a language in which it is permitted to qualify absolutes. This, however, is not the case; to say "very unique" is illogical in any language."


--From takeourword.com

Each is either unique or not unique. Technically, all four are unique. Everyone is unique. "Most unique" doesn't make any sense.
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