Uniquity

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]