"Very Unique" or, Merriam Webster, I'm calling you out!

[Electric_Warrior]

I was just reading a very entertaining, surprising, and informative book called Origins of the Specious, which discussed English language change and specifically myths about the origin, pronunciation, and spelling of words. In the afterword to the book, the author, Patricia T. O’Conner, apologizes for being slightly hypocritical: while the overarching “moral” of her book is that language change is inevitable and not necessarily “bad”, she herself has many language annoyances that are probably (soon to be) outdated. One of these is “very unique”.

So the story goes that ‘unique’ originally meant ‘one of a kind’, from the Latin unicus. For centuries it was used this way, and was an absolute term, like ‘perfect’, which could not be modified or intensified. However, its meaning has shifted to a more general sense of unusualness or remarkableness, and people have started using qualifiers in phrases like “somewhat unique” or “very unique”.

Merriam Webster Online also discusses this phenomenon:

@Merriam-Webster Online

Many commentators have objected to the comparison or modification (as by somewhat or very) of unique, often asserting that a thing is either unique or it is not. Objections are based chiefly on the assumption that unique has but a single absolute sense, an assumption contradicted by information readily available in a dictionary. Unique dates back to the 17th century but was little used until the end of the 18th when, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was reacquired from French. H. J. Todd entered it as a foreign word in his edition (1818) of Johnson’s Dictionary, characterizing it as “affected and useless.” Around the middle of the 19th century it ceased to be considered foreign and came into considerable popular use. With popular use came a broadening of application beyond the original two meanings (here numbered 1 and 2a). In modern use both comparison and modification are widespread and standard but are confined to the extended senses 2b and 3. When sense 1 or sense 2a is intended, unique is used without qualifying modifiers.

I don’t think that Merriam-Webster or O’Conner is paying very much attention to the real-life usage of ‘unique’. I would not say that someone is unique because she is unusual; I would say she’s unusual, or remarkable, or strange, or creative, or nonconformist, or different, or out-of-the-ordinary, or offbeat…and so on. I would say she is unique because I think no one else in the world is quite like her. But everyone is a unique individual - no two people are quite alike - so perhaps I would say she’s very unique because I think she is wildly unlike anyone else in the world. Here, the intensifier is implying the numerous ways in which she is one of a kind. She is very unique - she is unique in many ways.

Actually, why can’t someone be very perfect? Or very dead? (This fellow here is dead, he passed away about five minutes ago, whereas to the left we have an Egyptian mummy…very dead.) I can see why ‘very pregnant’ wouldn’t work out too well, but I think a lot of the time when people are instructing me not to use intensifiers, they’re misinterpreting what I am trying to convey. Food for thought.

Or am I just…very wrong?

[Mindfield]

@Electric_Warrior

Actually, why can’t someone be very perfect? Or very dead? (This fellow here is dead, he passed away about five minutes ago, whereas to the left we have an Egyptian mummy…very dead.)

Ah, but maybe he’s only mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

[Civil_Guy]

There are a lot of restaurants that grill their steaks to, well, perfection. One is tempted to wonder just a teensy bit whether all of those steaks are of the same by-definitition-impossible-to-surpass quality… ah, forget it.

(Last week I heard a sports announcer talking about the enormity of the other team’s offensive line. Now there’s a word whose ‘official’ meaning is not well understood.)

[BigT]

Very pregnant would mean you are really close to giving birth. I’ve heard it in many sitcoms.

Anyways, the people telling you not to use very the way you do know exactly what you mean. They just think that the words you are using do not match your meaning. It boils down to wanting to have words with precise, unchanging meanings. And while it might be nice to be able to be that precise, it isn’t the way language works.