Paul,
I'm with you on one level. It's a shame when a perfectly fine (indeed,
a unique word) begins to lose its special quality. You would like to
use it in such a way that everyone knows you mean "one of a kind". It's
the kind of point I enjoy from William Safire in his columns. Your
students, though, are used to thinking of it as meaning "unusual"
because that is a common meaning for it in actual use. I confess I have
probably said "very unique" without thinking about it as
problematic.>Thanks to your conversation, I have now looked closely at
the dictionary and deepened my understanding.
I love the idea that you would talk to your students about it. When
language changes, something is gained and something is lost. You care
about fine shades of meaning, as we all should. Ultimately, I think
decisions about these sorts of changes are out of our hands. A word
means what people think it means. But I also think that sort of
discussion with students is very productive. Language changes over
time, and it may not always seem for the best.
Craig,
>
> My problem with "very unique" is that unique means (to ME), one of a
> kind (or some emphatic variation of that idea). It is illogical to me to
> say that something can be "very one of a kind" or "most one of a kind."
> I'm not sure how I feel about "thoroughly unique" and "absolutely
> unique;" for some reason, and I am hard pressed to express what that
> reason is, the logic doesn't bother me. Maybe I'm being too fussy about
> that usage. What I really meant to emphasise in my previous post,
> however, was that many of my students couldn't see the logical problem
> in the expression in the first place.
>
> It's curious that the two most "objectional" examples from the OED below
> are first from the voice of a toad (In "The Wind in the Willows") and
> next from an advertisement (Country Life, 1939). I guess that fictional
> toads and real-life ad copy writers have a different sent of standards
> from mine!
>
> So it goes,
>
> Paul D.
>
> Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >Paul,
> I just remembered I can access the OED if I use my UAlbany account.
> Here's a section copied from their entry for "unique". It has been
> "Objected to", as they say, but a fairly common practice in their own
> examples, dating back well into the nineteenth century.
>
> Craig
>
> From the OED, the second entry for "unique":
>
> 2. a. That is or forms the only one of its kind; having no like or
> equal; standing alone in comparison with others, freq. by reason of
> superior excellence; unequalled, unparalleled, unrivalled.
> In this sense readopted from French at the end of the 18th c. and
> regarded as a foreign word down to the middle of the 19th, from which
> date it has been in very common use, with a tendency to take the wider
> meaning of ‘uncommon, unusual, remarkable’.
> The usage in the comparative and superlative, and with advs. as
> absolutely, most, quite, thoroughly, totally, etc., has been objected to
> as tautological.
>
> 1618 W. BARCLAY Well at King-horne Avij, This is a soueraigne and vnicke
> remedie for that disease in Women. 1794 R. J. SULIVAN View Nat. I. 3 A
> concentrated, and an unique aggregation of almost all the wonders of the
> natural world. 1809 R. K. PORTER Trav. Sk. Russia & Sweden (1813) I. xxv.
> 285 As it was thoroughly unique, I cannot forbear presenting you with so
> singular a curiosity. 1842 J. P. COLLIER Armin's Nest Ninn. Introd., A
> relic..not only unique in itself, but unprecedented in its kind. 1866
> LIDDON Bamp. Lect. v. (1867) 368 [Christ's] relationship to the Father..is
> absolutely unique. 1871 B. TAYLOR Faust (1875) II. II. i. 84 A thing so
> totally unique The great collectors would go far to seek. 1885 Harper's
> Mag. April 703/1 When..these summer guests found themselves defrauded of
> their uniquest recreations. 1908 K. GRAHAME Wind in Willows viii. 168
> ‘Toad Hall,’ said the Toad proudly, ‘is an eligible self-contained
> gentleman's residence, very unique.’ 1912 CHESTERTON Manalive I. iii. 86
> Diana Duke..began putting away the tea things. But it was not before
> Inglewood had seen an instantaneous picture so unique that he might well
> have snapshotted it. 1939 Country Life 11 Feb. p. xviii/2 (Advt.), Almost
> the most unique residential site along the south coast. 1960 [see DIQUAT].
> 1980 Verbatim Autumn 15/2 A high-ranking state Alcoholic Beverage
> Commission official said Friday that Wednesday's retroactive renewal and
> transfer of the beverage permit of the rural Bloomington Liars' Lodge by
> the Monroe County Alcoholic Beverage Board was ‘unique but not uncommon’.
>
>
>
>
> Doesn't the 'each' automatically make the 'other' singular?
>>
>> Paul D.
>>
>> Speaking of redundancy, my students often struggle against the notion
>> that "very unique" doesn't make sense to me.
>>
>> stein wrote:
>>
>> Here is your posting Joanne.
>> Thank you, Herb and Paul for responding to my question.
>> Dalia
>> -------Original Message-------
>>
>> From: Johanna Rubba
>> Date: 03/15/06 02:51:00
>> To: stein
>> Cc: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> Subject: Re: Blue Color; each other
>>
>>
>> Dalia,
>>
>> I wonder if you could post this for me: (Thanks!)
>>
>> "I like the blue color" could be another example of the tendency
>> towards redundant expressions which seems to be strong in English right
>> now. My students often write things like "equally as good"; there's the
>> old "refer back"; "both my sister and brother share this tendency"; and
>> others that don't come readily to mind. I can imagine someone
>> responding to a question like "Which color shirt do you like best?"
>> with "The blue color." "Color" links the answer to the question, and
>> puts the queried word ("which color") in the answer.
>>
>> I also have a query about "each other" -- how do we make it possessive,
>> as in
>>
>> "They are always snooping into each other's business." Should it be <
>> each others' > ? I keep doing a Gestalt shift on this; right now the
>> first one looks right. How about a clear more-than-two:
>>
>> "The students then proofread each other's papers." Here, the <'s> looks
>> wrong; the coreference with the plural "students" is getting in the
>> way.
>>
>> Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
>> Linguistics Minor Advisor
>> English Department
>> California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
>> E-mail: [log in to unmask]
>> Tel.: 805.756.2184
>> Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
>> Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
>> URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>>
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