Uniquity

[undyingking]

Our quiz streak has come to an end, or (as I prefer to see it) been interrupted -- after winning the Copdock pre-school one, the last one at the Nelson (they concentrate on food instead during the summer), and the Neighbourhood Watch one, we only ran-up at the Dove beer festival quiz.

I'd like to say (although it isn't true) that this was because we were musing over a curiosity of usage that popped up in one of the earlier questions. See what you make of it!

The question was "What is unique about the Edradour whisky distillery?"

And the answer was "It's the smallest distillery in Scotland."

Now this made me feel quite uneasy, but I'm not sure why. Clearly being the smallest does in a sense make it unique, in that there can be only one that is the smallest, and this is that one. But it seems to me that "unique" should require more than that.

Thinking about it, I think that for "unique" to be satisfying, it must be a quality that only one thing possesses, but that others could do -- they just happen not to. Eg. Edradour might be the only distillery with red roof tiles, or the only one owned by a cat, or the only one that begins with "e".

So things like "the smallest" which is just one extreme of a continuum along which they all lie, don't count. Nor does any other quality of which there must always be exactly one example -- this seems to me like a "trivial uniqueness", for which there ought to be a different word.

[Poll #1195623]

Comments

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

I think perhaps also for the question to feel right all the other distilleries must be similar in the way in which they differ from the unique one. If the has a red tile roof, this only makes it unique if all the others have, say, thatched roofs. Or if they all have grey tiled roofs. But if they all have tiled roofs but each is a different colour, then the red tiled roof isn't unique any more, because in they're all unique in the same sense. Though it could be, perhaps, that they all have grey tiles or black tiles except for this one, in which case unique is ok.

Language is interesting. I have many conversations about this kind of stuff with Damian, who, not being a native Spanish speaker, is endlessly fascinated by English usage, and constantly asking me to explain when we say one thing and when we say another very similar thing, and what makes the difference. Last night we were talking about the difference between a 'glint' and a 'twinkle' in someone's eye. The other day it was the difference between 'turning up' and 'showing up'.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

they're all unique in the same sense

Hmm,interesting, I'm not sure if I agree about this. I think that if they all have different-coloured roofs, I would still be OK to say that each of them is unique in being the only blue one etc. (But clearly it's a non-interesting type of uniqueness.)

The reason being that say you have 100 distilleries, and 99 or them are blue, 1 is red: clearly here the red one is unique. Or if all 100 are different colours, then in your system the red one is not unique. But what about the cases between these extremes? -- if 98 are different colours but 2 are blue, is the red one unique or not? If 50 are different colours and 50 are blue? Etc. It would seem hard to avoid either absurdum or an abitrary grey area of crossover.

Mm, answering non-English speakers' questions about it makes you realize how complex and subtle these meaning shades can be. I miss Swiss friend Ori for that, she speaks several European languages fluently so was great at suggesting culturo-etymological reasons for variations.