This is bugging the crap out of me, and Google ain’t helping. I’m trying to think of a particular word for a person who is one-of-a-kind, who perhaps stands out against all others in their field (perhaps in an idiosyncratic way), and I just can’t come up with it. Perhaps it even has a rebellious connotation to it as well, but I’m not sure, as I can’t think of the damned word. “Iconoclast” leapt to mind, but that’s a bit of a different thing. I hope the word I’m thinking of exists. It is not impossible I’m thinking of a word I made up in my head. It’s a word that’s a bit of an “SAT”-type word. So it’s not something like “maverick” (which doesn’t exactly fit my definition.)
Oh, help dear Dope before this question consumes me. What word can I be thinking of?
Hmmm … that may be it, but I feel like there’s another word. That’s definitely a word I’m familiar with, so it could be what I’m thinking of. I’ll see if there are any other suggestions, but so far, this is most likely it. I thought I was thinking of a single word, but this fits the concept perfectly.
At this point, I’m guessing the word I’m thinking of is most likely sui generis, although I thought I was looking for a noun. Nonpareil checks all the boxes in terms of meaning and diction, and it was recently in the New York Times crossword, but I know that wasn’t the word. So I’ll just give the gold star to DavidNRockies and a silver star to DPRK. Fun word to be reminded of, as I usually think of nonpareils as a fancy word for those small ball-shaped sprinkles you put on cookies or pastries, but always forget the other meaning.
I don’t need the word for anything I’m writing, it’s just something that popped into my head and has been scratching at me all day. Thanks!
Yeah, I came up with all of those in the thesaurus. Sui generis is most likely the word my brain was trying to think of. And now, for the life of me, I can’t remember why I was trying to think of that word.
While I did say “perhaps stands out” I didn’t mean in an exemplary way, as in being better than everyone else, but more so blazing their own trail, like a maverick, or just being quirky and idiosyncratic.
That said, as I said above, I think my mind was making up a word that didn’t exist but was reaching for sui generis. If there was another word, it would have come up by now. (I mean, nonpareil is another word that fits really well, but I don’t come across that word enough for it to be the one I was thinking of.)