unique

 I must admit that I have not written about unique because I consider it to be a lost cause.  I, too, was told when young that unique, because it means ‘one of a kind’, cannot take a comparative and superlative. 

 This was the original meaning of unique but, of course, words move on and take on new meanings. Unique came to be a synonym for unusual or rare. There are many citations attesting this throughout the 1800s and 1900s up to the present day.  In fact the instances of unique meaning ‘unusual’ now outnumber the instances of unique meaning ‘one of a kind’. 

 Just as you can say that a style is very unusual, or that a bird is very rare, so you can say that something is very unique. High praise indeed is to say that it is the most unique that you have ever seen.  Google Ngram shows a steep increase in frequency for very unique and most unique from the late 1800s to the present day.

 That said, most editors will still blue-pencil very unique as being a feature of the spoken language that should not be allowed in print.  The day will come when we have a generation of editors for whom very unique is so common that it will pass without comment but I don’t think we are quite there yet.  Personally I find that most unique seems acceptable but that very unique still jars. The things I was taught in primary school still shape my attitudes it seems.