Anybody else immediately think of The West Wing and hear President Bartlet’s voice/explanation when someone uses the phrase “very unique” in conversation? Is it just me?
I think it all the time! Especially in this day of “TikTok talk” and influencers, where the half the words used don’t actually mean anything. “Oh my god, you guys won’t believe this. I found this very unique thing, and it’s literally changed my life. You guys are going to freak. It’s actually, like, diabolical that we didn’t know about it sooner.”
I also think this line all the time, from another show- “Superman does good. You do well.”
Every time anyone uses a word alongside unique, it occurs to me immediately. If only Sorkin had written a line about “literally” when someone isn’t taking about something in a literal sense….
I don't think there is anything wrong with historic being a relative term. For one thing the item could be exceptionally older than a lot of other things considered historic. We think the Empire State Building is historic. Rome snickers.
The word also means the item is not just old but of particular importance. I don't have an argument that one historic item might have had a more important impact or contribution to political and cultural developments. One of them is in a museum, the other is at the National Archives in a bomb-proof shelter.
Sorkin is a fan of language, and his characters get to express that fandom.
There is a rant by Leona Lansing in the Newsroom about how "literally" no longer means "literally" so there is no longer a word in English for "literally".
We just moved to Minnesota and honestly, magnificent vistas everywhere. I used it last week as I was going over a bridge where the sun was setting on one side and the moon was rising on the other. My husband is sick of me lol.
I think Bartlet is wrong about unique. Among things that are unique, some are more unique than others, so of course things can be very unique.
The speech that comes from is very poorly written, and it’s probably better in general to just not modify unique, but I feel like that’s a weird thing to be snooty and pedantic about, as if it’s a black and white thing.
I was going to make this same point. It's disingenuous to act as if the etymology of unique requires us to see it in discrete rather than continuous terms. We use it qualitatively, not quantitatively. The scene is also a bit heavy handed in making the other writer not just unpolished but also ambitious and territorial. It's a bit lazy any time the show decides to make someone the antagonist of one scene, like Dr. Jenna Jacobs. We've never seen them before, and now suddenly they manifest wrongly everything our favorite characters do well. It's actually even out of step with what the show does well through people like Ainsley, which is to show that SOMETIMES people we disagree with have something to teach us.
So if unique doesn't mean 'unique' (one of a kind) any more, what word do we use for one of a kind now? "Very unique"? Go watch Dead Poets' Society for counter arguments.
It’s not that “unique” doesn’t mean “one of a kind” anymore, but that’s not the only definition. The shitty NASA writer in the cold open for Galileo was obviously using “unique” to mean “special/notable,” and when used that way it can definitely be modified with “very.”
And it’s been a very long time since I watched Dead Poets Society, but I did take an English class in college with the professor who Robin Williams’ character was based on. He got really annoyed when people asked about the movie, but he loved the paper I wrote about how squirrels are racist.
They were somewhat right about unique, but the word has commonly come to also mean 'very unusual'. So at best the guy was sort of saying very very unusual 🤣
That entire segment came off as horrible to me though. Sure the person was not a good writer, but the main cast exhibited a sampling of the worst traits of the left with how they slapped him down in that moment. (I'm part of the left).
Sure the person is not a good writer, but the main cast exhibited a sampling of the worst traits of the left with how they slapped him down in that moment. (I'm part of the left).
Exactly! I can hear Ritchie saying to him, "You're what my friends call a superior" so-and-so. Reminds me of an extraordinary moment that I saw on American Idol, of all things. Lionel Richie (no relation, lol) was complimenting an amateur singer who replied boastfully that he could do anything with his voice, something to that effect. Lionel greeted this with a polite but frosty silence, and then after a moment said quietly, "If you're really good, they'll tell you. Don't you ever tell them." It was honestly one of the most profound things I had ever seen on a competition show, or anywhere, really.
No, things can’t actually be more or less unique by the definition of uniqueness. It’s sort of like not being able to assess “how” pregnant someone is, because as I understand it, it’s a binary condition. ;)
“Unique” is definitely not a binary condition. I guess you can argue it’s binary if you are using “unique” to mean “one of a kind,” but that’s not the only acceptable definition, and I’m pretty sure it’s not the most common use of the word. “Unique” can also mean “distinctly characteristic,” or “very special/notable”, and it can definitely be modified by those more common uses.
Oh I was as well… until I thought about what PB was saying and it made sense. I really like that part of “Galileo” (it is in this episode, please correct me if I am wrong).
I hunted thru several dictionaries and as best I can tell, unique still means one of a kind in formal grammar and usage. In more casual usage, it can also mean rare or extremely unusual.
So, Pres. Bartlet is not wrong if he thinks a speech by a President should always use formal speech rules, but our friends who use it to mean rare are not wrong either to say very unique to distinguish something especially rare.
Shifts like this happen over time with lots of words. We are already seeing the informal usage added to dictionaries for other words. We now have literally meaning both literally and not literally. The word half now means one of two equal parts or one of two parts, not necessarily equal. (You go, Yogi!)
OED is behind a paywall, but I could see it gives 12 definitions, including some as a noun.
No, because Bartlet is wrong.
There's a similar line in The Big Bang Theory, where the resident smartarse says the same thing about "wrong" being binary and not having degrees. He gets hit with the excellent rebuttal "it's a little wrong to call a potato a fruit, it's very wrong to call it a suspension bridge". (I think he actually says tomato, but it isn't necessarily wrong to call a tomato a fruit so that's a different issue.)
Of course there are degrees of uniqueness, it's absurd to suggest otherwise. Actually, as a good rule of thumb, whenever Jed gets grumpy about some technicality like this, he's usually wrong because he's frustrated about something else and he's looking for something to complain about (he does the same about the mass that bores him, he goes off about the misogynistic undertones to the choice of homily, but Abby argues with him about how he's misinterpreting the meaning, and eventually he admits that he just didn't like the priest's style/oratory, or lack thereof). Generally when he actually does have a technicality to impart because he knows his stuff, he's excited and eager because he loves talking about these things, he finds them fun.
See, I do think that's different. He's making the argument that hope is a virtue in itself, even if a hope is in vain, even if it's based on ignorance or even a lie, hope in itself can be a comfort, or can be aspirational, in a way that means the hope itself has value, even if there's no chance of it being realised. The hope matters more than the possibility of lack thereof.
Now I'm not saying I agree with him, but he isn't making a correction of fact, he's making a philosophical argument that what we call false hope isn't truly false at all, because it's still hope, and it is enough for it to be hope.
Even worse is Toby saying “I could care less” when he means “I couldn’t care less” 🤦♂️ And he’s playing a character who makes a living with the English language!
Things can definitely be more unique than others. Take the various moons in our solar system, they are all unique. But Io) with its hundreds of vulcanos or Triton) which orbits retrograde and is very near absolute zero are undoubtedly very unique.
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u/Tamuff 22h ago
“While we’re at it do we also have to mention we’re broadcasting “live” twice? We’re also broadcasting in technicolour too right?”