English

Adjective

unique ‎(comparative more unique, superlative most unique)

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

     ‘[…] 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.

   • 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. (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 more unique and most unique, as well as the use of unique with modifiers as in fairly unique and very unique, are sometimes proscribed, with the reasoning that either something is unique or it is not.

Synonyms

• one of a kind
• sui generis
• singular

Derived terms

• uniqueness

Related terms

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

Translations

Noun

unique ‎(plural uniques)

1. A thing without a like; something unequalled or unparallelled.
   • De Quincey

     The phoenix, the unique of birds.

External links

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

French

Etymology

From Latin unicus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /y.nik/

Adjective

unique m, f ‎(plural uniques)

1. unique
2. only

Related terms

• monnaie unique
• unicité
• uniquement