Friday, December 07, 2007

I'm Annoyed*

I hate when people modify "unique" with comparatives. Something can't be "fairly unique" or "one of the most unique" X, regardless of what dictionary.com says. Unique means there's only one. This modification is common, so common I fear "unique" will some mean only unusual. It's also so common that my reaction is now knee-jerk: I get annoyed even with appropriate modifiers, such as "genuinely," until I remember they're okay.
But you know what's worse? When the New Yorker uses the term "trending."

*I'm all kinds of negative things, but I'll just leave it at this for now.