A very unique problem

(This is Bringing the Heat, an as-often-as-I-feel-like-it feature where I say something that will probably get me yelled at on Twitter.)

I graduated from college with a journalism degree. I’ve been an editor for three different newspapers and several different websites. I’ve had writers whose work I edit call me “AP Style boy.” There are unquestionably people who know grammar far, far better than I do, but just speaking generally, I’m as close to an expert on the subject of grammar and editing as you’ll find in your everyday life. So when I say something on the subject, know that it’s well-considered and clearly thought out.

(I say none of that to brag. I’ve studied it for years. I should be a quasi-expert. It’s just a true thing, not a “look how awesome I am” thing.)

So keep that whole paragraph in mind when I say: You can (and should!) absolutely modify unique to various gradients.

Virtually everything is unique. I don’t mean just down to a molecular level — where it’s unquestionably true — but just from a practical standpoint, if you can’t toss in a “very” unique on the word, then the word is pointless.

The example I always use: You go to a friend’s house and he shows you his car, which he has painted with pink stripes and has put a guitar sticker on the front. You say “Wow, that’s unique.” Ten seconds later, another car drives by that drives six feet off the ground, has been modified with shark fins, and plays the Rent soundtrack on a loudspeaker everywhere it goes.

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Now, with the second car, you can either say, “Hm, also unique,” in which case you are not differentiating from the first car (unique) and the second (unique times a hundred), or you can say “Man, that one is very unique.” If you can’t say the latter, then you have lost the ability to differentiate between one qualification of unique and another, when there clearly needs to be a distinct delineation. You couldn’t have tempered your description of the initial car as “somewhat” unique or whatever hair-splitting you might have wanted, because you didn’t expect the second car to come around.

Linguists who read this will yell at me, particularly because the prefix “uni-” means one, and once something is singular you can’t be “very” that. To which I’ll say: Yes you freaking can. Even if the base rules of the language dictate otherwise, we are allowed to take those rules and modify them to more logical purposes.

Something can be very unique. It can be especially unique. Come at me. I’ll fight you on this, and I’ll win.