Actually both you AND Cary will be surprised to learn the etymology of 'unique' is not so, er, unique as to suggest an open and shut case! But don't take my word for it, take Jesse Sheidlower's, AB'89 University of Chicago, who has recently become the Oxford English Dictionary's first North American editor.
alumni.uchicago.edu
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"For instance, people complain about the use of unique with any kind of adverbial modifier: 'most unique,' 'very unique,' whatever. In fact, the history of unique shows that it was an exceptionally rare word at one time, and then around the 1860s or 1870s, pretty much all at once a number of senses sprung up, one of those senses being the sole example of something that you can't modify. But other examples meant unusual or esoteric; you certainly could say 'very unique,' and the OED will tell you that. It will also give other examples of words that are usually considered unmodifiable like perfect, where one of the reasons this country was founded was 'to form a more perfect union.' So while I am not going to say people shouldn't be upset by 'more unique' or 'most unique,' nonetheless, one would like them to be so with the understanding of how unique has been used throughout its entire history, to know that objecting to 'more' or 'most unique' is almost entirely arbitrary and has nothing to do with the history of it or any related word."
RO |
