# Is it proper to qualify the word "unique"? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 31, 2016, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162 "2016-05-31T14:29:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/21 "2016-06-01T03:26:17Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges writes only in English, lamenting that Spanish is so rigid, that "you can’t do those things in Spanish. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Borges died 30 years ago this month so “writes” is the wrong tense for him, unless he is exceptionally unique. Nope. As the Chicago manual of style notes [here](http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Usage/faq0047.html), you’re supposed to use the present tense when talking about an author’s writing. Even if he’s dead. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/22 "2016-06-01T06:17:00Z")
All animals are unique, but some animals are more unique than others. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/23 "2016-06-01T06:34:57Z")
Let’s say I grant that unique is unqualifiable. Are there any other words like that? Or is unique completely unique? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/24 "2016-06-01T06:49:17Z")
Other absolutes include “absolute.” ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/25 "2016-06-01T13:23:01Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Let’s say I grant that unique is unqualifiable. > Are there any other words like that? > Or is unique completely unique? Exchange between Sheldon and Stewart on Big Bang: Stewart: Sheldon, you could not be more wrong. Sheldon: More wrong? Wrong is an absolute state and not subject to degradation Stuart: It’s a little wrong to say to say a tomato is a vegetable, it’s very wrong to say it’s a suspension bridge ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/26 "2016-06-01T14:11:38Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > I’m a little confused by this whole exchange. What does the number of visitors have to do with it? It’s the _experience_ that is unique. Of all the the places that one could potentially go in the universe, no other place is quite like Paris. Everyplace is unique, in some ways but not in others. Amana, Iowa, is unique in conspicuously more ways than Anamosa, Iowa. It is efficient to reduce that to “Amana is more unique then Anamosa”, without harming the accuracy of an interpretation that a listener would come away with. Being succinct often has more communications value than being precise, and allowing for such tradeoffs, precision is not necessarily the ultimate good. If I needed to be absolutly precise, this paragraph would be ten (or a hundred) times as long, but with diminishing returns. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/27 "2016-06-01T14:53:23Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Exchange between Sheldon and Stewart on Big Bang: > > Stewart: Sheldon, you could not be more wrong. > Sheldon: More wrong? Wrong is an absolute state and not subject to degradation > Stuart: It’s a little wrong to say to say a tomato is a vegetable, it’s very wrong to say it’s a suspension bridge Sheldon should be ashamed of himself. It’s a paraphrase of Asimov: [QUOTE=Isaac Asimov in The Relativity Of Wrong] When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together. [/QUOTE] Quite a serious point, I think. A trope of anti-science or pseudoscience is something like “Well, they say Newton was the greatest scientist, but Einstein showed he was wrong, so scientists don’t know anything for sure. Therefore homeopathy.” But of course Newton wasn’t wrong in the same way that homeopathy is wrong. Science is often a process of fleshing the domain of validity of a theory such as Newtonian mechanics, and eventually discovering a more comprehensive theory, of which the old theory is still a valid approximation under many conditions. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/28 "2016-06-01T15:12:44Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > It makes no sense to not quantify it. Consider: > > Going to Paris is a unique experience. > Going to the moon is also a unique experience. > > Fewer people have gone to the moon, so it’s more unique. > [@Riemann](#): > > I’m a little confused by this whole exchange. What does the number of visitors have to do with it? It’s the _experience_ that is unique. Of all the the places that one could potentially go in the universe, no other place is quite like Paris. > [@jtur88](#): > > Everyplace is unique, in some ways but not in others. Amana, Iowa, is unique in conspicuously more ways than Anamosa, Iowa. It is efficient to reduce that to “Amana is more unique then Anamosa”, without harming the accuracy of an interpretation that a listener would come away with. Being succinct often has more communications value than being precise, and allowing for such tradeoffs, precision is not necessarily the ultimate good. If I needed to be absolutly precise, this paragraph would be ten (or a hundred) times as long, but with diminishing returns. Ok, I get that part. But in the example, quantifying by counting visitors seems wrong. **Going to the moon is a unique experience.** The uniqueness is an attribute of the _experience_, not the people visiting. To quantify it, you would judge just how different the moon really is from other similar places. If it turns out that there is nowhere even remotely similar to the moon, then you could say the _experience_ is completely unique. I don’t see why it would matter if even every human being on earth decided to visit. Each of them would be having an experience completely unlike any other experience that they could possibly have. **I am unique because I have been to the moon.** Here uniqueness is an attribute of the _visitor_, so counting the number of people who have shared either this experience or a similar experience is relevant to quantify the uniqueness of the person. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/29 "2016-06-01T15:15:55Z")
Yeah. **Riemann** , that Asimov essay is exactly what I thought of. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/30 "2016-06-01T16:35:49Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Nope. As the Chicago manual of style notes [here](http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Usage/faq0047.html), you’re supposed to use the present tense when talking about an author’s writing. Even if he’s dead. You’re incorrect for applying that here. If jtur88 said, “As Borges writes in ‘On Exactitude in Science’ …” that precept could apply. (Could, because your cite indicates that it’s the convention in academic writing, which this isn’t.) But in fact he said, “Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges writes only in English, lamenting that Spanish is so rigid, that ‘you can’t do those things in Spanish.’” That’s not quoting Borges - that’s a statement about his life. As such it is subject to normal tense structure. In fact Borges did not write only in English. He spent most of his life writing in Spanish. He was virtually unknown to the American audience until his major works started appearing in translation in the 1960s. Even after that he wrote mostly in Spanish. Although he was fluent in English and other languages I don’t know if he ever indeed started writing in English in preference to Spanish. If he did a proper expression of that would be “Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges _started to write_ [or _eventually wrote_] only in English, lamenting that Spanish is so rigid, that ‘you can’t do those things in Spanish.’” ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/31 "2016-06-01T19:57:27Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > English is almost unique in that it is not bound by laws. French is bound by the edict of Academie Francaise, which is a 40-member body that meets from time to time and deems what is correct in the French Language. German recently underwent a formal respelling of a number of German words, which became “correct” by order, but I understand that a lot of Germans are refusing to comply. > > Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges writes only in English, lamenting that Spanish is so rigid, that “you can’t do those things in Spanish”. Would that be THE Jorge Luis Borges, or someone else? Because the one I know of is not writing any more (he died in 1986, some zombie) and wrote extensively in Spanish; he also translated or adapted many works to Spanish (he was definitely not a believer in word-for-word translations, hence the “or adapted”). And the Academies don’t write laws - rules, but not laws. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/32 "2016-06-01T21:23:43Z")
picture a universe consisting of squares (two dimensional ojects, not nerds), millions of them. If all but one is one unit in size, but one is 2 units – it is unique. But introduce a triangle, and I would argue that it is more unique. Brian ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/33 "2016-06-01T21:37:49Z")
> [@N9IWP](#): > > picture a universe consisting of squares (two dimensional ojects, not nerds), millions of them. If all but one is one unit in size, but one is 2 units – it is unique. > But introduce a triangle, and I would argue that it is more unique. > > Brian One triangle does not tesselate with a universe of squares. What’s filling in the gaps around this triangle? Seems to me there must be more triangles that you’re not telling us about. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/34 "2016-06-01T21:44:26Z")
The squares are freely floating and not in general connected. (if they choose to do so it is thuier own business) Brian ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162/35 "2016-06-01T21:50:35Z")
> [@N9IWP](#): > > The squares are freely floating and not in general connected. (if they choose to do so it is thuier own business) > > Brian You’re digging yourself a deeper hole here:). From elementary two-dimensional reaction rate theory, unless the population of squares is sparse, three randomly drifting squares will come into conjuction rather frequently to form a triangle between them. Irregular four-sided shapes will also occur quite frequently. And is this universe finite? How much money are you asking for this “unique” triangle? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-proper-to-qualify-the-word-unique/756162.md?page=1)