unique
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /juːˈniːk/
note: weak vowel merger
ipa: /jəˈ-/
note: Indic
ipa: /jʊˈnik/
note: Indic
ipa: /ˈjunik/
note: spelling pronunciation
ipa: /-nɪk/
rhymes: -iːk
Forms: form: uniquer
form: more unique
form: uniquest
form: most unique
Etymology: Borrowed from French unique. Piecewise doublet of any.
Senses: examples: text: Every person has a unique life, therefore every person has a unique journey.
text: 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.
ref: 1920, Robert W. Lawson, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, translation of original by Albert Einstein:
text: 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;
ref: 1941, Allen v. Walt Disney:
text: ‘[…] 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—’
ref: 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
text: Admiralty Island contains unique resources of scientific interest which need protection to assure continued opportunities for study.
ref: 1978, Jimmy Carter, Proclamation 4611:
text: A very interesting history of United Nations at war in Korea, done in an^([sic]) unique question and answer style.
ref: 1998, Paul M. Edwards, The Korean War: An Annotated Bibliography, Greenwood Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 114:
text: GPS assigns a unique C/A code and a unique P code to each satellite.
ref: 2002, The American Practical Navigator:
synonyms: one of a kind
sui generis
singular
glosses: Being the only one of its kind; unequaled, unparalleled or unmatched.
glosses: Of a feature, such that only one holder has it.
examples: ref: 1999, Harry J. Cargas, Problems Unique to the Holocaust:
glosses: Particular, characteristic.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1950, J.D. Salinger, For Esmé—With Love and Squalor:
glosses: Of a rare quality, unusual.
Synonyms: word: alone
word: azygous
word: incomparable
word: matchless
word: nonpareil
word: peerless
word: singular
word: sui generis
word: unequaled
word: unique
word: unparalleled
word: unmatched
word: unrivalled
Hyponyms: word: newfangled
word: novel
word: original
word: unprecedented
Derived terms: non-unique
uniq fruit
unique factorization domain
unique factorization ring
unique-headed bug
unique identification number
unique identifier
unique key
uniquel
uniqueness
uniquify
uniquity
universally unique identifier
Related terms: word: unicity
word: one-of-a-kind
word: inimitable
word: first and last
word: ideal
word: nonesuch
word: one of a kind
word: one-off
word: only
word: paragon
word: snowflake
word: sole
word: solitary
word: strange
word: uniqueness