From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Unique hypothesis--comments welcome!
Summary: Who needs it?  8-)
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 22:40:11 GMT

Thank you, Gabe.

I mean it: you've provided what may be a key to this controversy
about "unique."  I'm referring to some examples (paraphrased
here) that you used in posing some questions about the uses of
"unique."  First:

    "Jane is unique among the applicants."

Does this mean that no other person on earth can do the job as
well?  Or merely that Jane is really good, pretty special?  Or
that Jane shouldn't be hired under any circumstances--i.e., that
she has some unique feature that disqualifies her?  Take your
pick.

The other example: 

     "The conference was a unique opportunity to meet so many
     scholars."

Does it really mean "one-of-a-kind"?  Or would people say this if
there might be one or two other opportunities like that in a
lifetime?

The sticking point is that by its derivation, "unique" ought to
mean "one-of-a-kind," period.  So why does it become a synonym
for "very, very rare"?  Why is its hyperbolic use seemingly
irresistible?

Let's step back for a moment and think about something that's
unique in the strict sense.  What do we know about it?  Not a
lot, really.  Good or bad, enormous or tiny, tasty or digusting,
bright or dull -- once we know it's unique, we'll still have to
find out what makes it unique, and why anyone would care.  After
all, just about everything is in some way unique, even a house in
Levittown.

On to the first example.  We don't generally say that something
or someone is unique if we don't like the unique quality --
unless we mention that negative quality right away, as in
"Hitler's unique evil."  Copywriters for advertising know this,
which is why they use "unique" so often: we associate it with the
Good, the Big, the Customized, the Handmade, and the Luxuriously
Expensive.  So we know that Jane is worth hiring; only someone
desperate to weasel out of writing a bad letter of reference
would use an unqualified "unique" to say that Jane was worth
avoiding at all costs.

This helps us understand Arthur Miller's description of his
blonde-bombshell bride: "She's the most unique person I've ever
met."  "Unique" means, not just "unusual"  (or "one-of-a-kind")
but "unusual in lots of good ways."  Miller was saying that she
was just the woman for him, and to a degree he could never have
imagined before.  (And I think this was understood by everyone
who heard him say that.)

Many unique things are unique by being superlative: the biggest
in a class is unique, because no other one is the biggest.  But
as soon as we ask why it's unique, we're back to superlatives and
the scales they imply: unique = biggest or strongest or whatever
in this large set of cases.

This puts "unique" at the North Pole, so to speak, at the
convergence of infinitely many scales.  The biggest, fastest,
smallest, etc. are all unique.  More important, it's the ultra-
superlative of "rare."  Nothing can be more rare than the unique:
so we think, "rare, rarer, rarest, unique."  That's not strictily
logical, or according to standardized patterns of language, but I
think that's how people relate "unique" to those other words.

This is what I've been calling the hyperbolic use of "unique,"
too.  Gabe's second example--"a unique opportunity to meet
scholars"--is the sort of thing one says instead of "a really,
really rare and good opportunity" (not that one generally speaks
of bad things as opportunities, either).

My last bit of evidence is the quotation from Todd (1818), cited
(epigrammatically, one suspects) at the beginning of the entry
for "unique".

     "an affected and useless term of modern times."  

Todd may be right.  Aside from the use as "only" ("two is the
unique even prime number"), "unique" isn't very important, at
least, not to me.  (I'd like to hear from people who use the word
a lot and find it indispensable.)  Some of us have been arguing
that "unique" has a specific, unquestionable meaning, and that
that is the "beauty of the word" that shouldn't be spoiled--but
what does the word in its beautiful form buy us?  In almost all
cases, we'll still want to know the "why," the way in which a
thing is unique; rather than being highly specific, the word is
uniquely vague when taken alone, and otherwise, it only serves to
draw attention to a description of the specific uniqueness in
question.  We still need to hear about "biggest," "only one
encrusted with diamonds," "last surviving," "most diversely
experienced," or whatever before "unique" tells us anything of
value.

In almost all those cases, "unique" will collaborate with a
superlative, so the urge to apply a modifier to "unique" itself
is understandable.

I'm going to try to avoid using "unique" entirely, just for the
heck of it.  I'm more and more convinced that the relative
unimportance of the word is one reason why its extension to the
hyperbolic use is so natural, so seemingly irresistible.

I'd like to hear from anyone who agrees or disagrees.  Tell me 
what you think -- and why.


Roger Lustig