Very unique!

Hetty58

Anything more than 100% drives me crazy!

But sometimes it is.

I am getting a 110% credit on my cruise deposit (from pre pandemic) - deposit was $6000, I am getting $6,600 credit.

Is that not more than 100%?

I hate it when Amazon tells me I can pre-order a book.

Oh yes, Scribbles. Waterstones does it too. Even if the book hasn't been published yet, you are still ordering it!

AussieNanna

Hetty58

Anything more than 100% drives me crazy!

But sometimes it is.

I am getting a 110% credit on my cruise deposit (from pre pandemic) - deposit was $6000, I am getting $6,600 credit.

Is that not more than 100%?

It is more than 100%, which is perfectly possible where there is an infinite resource.

It's when people talk about liking things 110%, or putting in 110% effort that it grates on me. Both are 10% over the maximum amount of effort or ability to like that anyone can lay claim to.

I'm not sure why 'myself' is cropping up all over the place. "My wife and myself went to London". The other day I heard "The difference between you and myself". It seems 'myself' is now replacing 'I' and 'me'.

Also, we now longer 'show' things. We 'showcase' them. Does anybody know where that comes from?

Why say "I'm loving this (whatever)"? "I love this" was acceptable until this Americanism crept in. It makes me shudder.

Wheniwasyourage

Oh yes, CountessFosco. Every time I hear it, or its friend "almost unique", I can picture my DM with steam coming out of her ears. In fact, that whirring sound you hear as I type this will be her spinning in her grave!

Very unique - just no....

But I never saw the problem with "almost unique" - something that has happened to me only twice in my life is not unique, but it almost is.

I think we'll have to agree to differ about "almost unique" choughdancer and Petera. I just can't get past thinking of in the same bracket as "almost pregnant".

Wheniwasyourage

I think we'll have to agree to differ about "almost unique" choughdancer and Petera. I just can't get past thinking of in the same bracket as "almost pregnant".

I see where you're coming from but I think that's because pregnancy is a binary state and not a range.

If I went into a shop and looked at prices an item could cost £10 or not cost £10. I wouldn't blink at saying that something that cost £9.99 was 'almost £10'.

Likewise 'always' means, well, 'always', but we have no problem with 'almost always'.

You may argue that unique/nonunique is also binary, but it's almost always (see what I did there?) applied to a continuum (or at least countable) state.

Wheniwasyourage

I think we'll have to agree to differ about "almost unique" choughdancer and Petera. I just can't get past thinking of in the same bracket as "almost pregnant".

I'm with choughdancer on this one.

Something is either unique or it isn't, and you can't qualify an absolute. But something can also be so rare that it isn't quite unique, but is almost there.

Being pregnant is not on a scale, in the way that 'unique' is, so it's not possible to be 'almost pregnant', or 'a little bit pregnant'. Someone cleverer than myself I am might be able to explain why 'unique' is both absolute and at the top of a scale. Or something.

I dug out my Fowler's book on English Usage and found this:

^”...uniqueness is a matter of yes or no. The adverbs that unique can tolerate are quite, almost, nearly, really, surely, perhaps, absolutely...”

It is nonsense to call anything more, most, very, somewhat, rather unique".^

Hmmm. As I see it, you can't be 'very unique' but you can be 'nearly unique'. 'Quite unique' would only work if 'quite' is used to mean 'absolutely', but not if it means' almost'.

Does Fowler have anything to say about pregnancy?