Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Sorry, John, we're always snowed under and can't manage to respond to everything.

However, a good deal of information has been written about your question. My opinion is that unique can be wrong if used as a gradable adjective (meaning that you use “very” or a similar adverb in front of it), but it doesn't have to be wrong.

If something has, say, ten noteworthy features, one of them could be commonplace and the other nine could be unique to that sort of thing; therefore, the whole thing could be said to be very unique. But that's kind of looking for an exception.

The first link below is the one with the most sense, I think. Note what it says about even the best writers using things like “very unique.” Note, too, the idea of unique meaning “in a class by itself” rather than “completely different from everything else in the world.” Because, if you really want to get down to it, everything is unique, being that few things share all of their atoms with something else (other than the universe as a whole).

American Heritage usage note and its note on incomparable adjectives.

Barbara Wallraff's Word Court answer's a question about it.

Henry Fowler, in the 1908 (second) edition of his work.