+67 "It's quite unique, there's no other like it" - this is a weird-sounding statement - if there's NO OTHER like it, then surely it's more than "quite" unique! It's ABSOLUTELY unique, amirite?

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Please, never cease to school us grammatically.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

"unique' means one-of-a-kind, so you can't be "partially", "very", "absolutely", or "quite" unique at all.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

You're living in a 19th century dictionary-run fantasy land. Don't forget the lack of constraint on the English language, where things that have some unique and some shared qualities might be described by some as "quite" unique.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

If they have some shared qualities, they are not unique.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Mate, seriously, calm down with your textbook nonsense. I'm talking about how people actually talk in real life. If you think English requires people to stick to letter-for-letter dictionary and textbook definitions, you clearly don't know much about it.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

And anyway, of course they can have shared qualities and be unique. Everything can be unique in it's own way. A shared quality of two vases might be that they both hold up to 100 flowers. But what makes one unique is that it's made of beetle husk. It only takes one quality to make something unique. If you wanna get really technical :-P

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I'm guessing you live in the UK, just by your username, but here people hardly ever say unique. That vase would be "unique" because that's not really a shared trait. If there was a vase that was the same color, it would only be "different" because it's similar. I'm not speaking out of a textbook, just how people here (correctly) use the term.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

deary me, you clearly don't know that much about language. let's just call the whole thing off. you're acting like a proper grammar nazi. I'm talking about language in the real world. you think using text as a verb was always viewed as "correct"? well it is now - welcome to the glory that is the freedom, adaptability, and expressiveness of English

by Anonymous 11 years ago

*sigh* whatever you say, where I'm from unique is used properly

by Anonymous 11 years ago

You don't seem to be grasping the idea of adjectives being used (whether technically correct or not) on a scale. To use another example, terms like correct and incorrect - technically are very clear, black and white terms with no ambiguity. But in practice, are they really? So, in the post, what I'm talking about is that it's strange when people say things like "it's quite unique" - it's technically wrong to say so anyway, but what's doubly weird, is that if it's truly one-of-a-kind, then it's actually more than "quite" in the first place. You see what I mean?

by Anonymous 11 years ago