Differentiate vs Unique - What's the difference?
differentiate | unique |
To show, or be the distinction between two things.
* Earle
* {{quote-book, year=1933
, passage=The mass of the rich and poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.
, author=George Orwell, title=Down and Out in Paris and London, chapter=Ch. XXII, page=120, publisher=Harvest / Harcourt paperback edition}}
To perceive the difference between things; to discriminate.
* {{quote-book, title=, year=1964
, passage=he refused to instruct that actual intent to harm or recklessness had to be found before punitive damages could be awarded, or that a verdict for respondent should differentiate between compensatory and punitive damages.}}
(intransitive) To modify, or be modified.
(mathematics) To calculate the derivative of a function.
(mathematics) To calculate the differential of a function of multiple variables.
(biology) To produce distinct organs or to achieve specific functions by a process of development called differentiation.
* {{quote-book, title=, year=1930, author=Robert Evans Snodgrass
, passage=In Chapter IV we learned that every animal consists of a body, or soma, formed of cells that are differentiated from the germ cells usually at an early stage of development.}}
(not comparable) Being the only one of its kind; unequaled, unparalleled or unmatched.
*
*
* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)
, title=(The China Governess)
, chapter=3 *
*
Of a feature, such that only one holder has it.
Particular, characteristic.
* '>citation
(proscribed) Of a rare quality, unusual.
* {{quote-book, passage=And as I look back, it seems to me that we were fairly unique , the sixty of us, in that there wasn’t one good mixer in the bunch.
, title=For Esmé—With Love and Squalor
, author=J.D. Salinger
, year=1950}}
A thing without a like; something unequalled or unparallelled.
* De Quincey
As a verb differentiate
is to show, or be the distinction between two things.As an adjective unique is
being the only one of its kind; unequaled, unparalleled or unmatched.As a noun unique is
a thing without a like; something unequalled or unparallelled.differentiate
English
Verb
(differentiat)- The word "then" was differentiated into the two forms "then" and "than".
Derived terms
* differentiationExternal links
* *unique
English
Adjective
(en adjective)citation, passage=‘[…] There's every Staffordshire crime-piece ever made in this cabinet, and that's unique . The Van Hoyer Museum in New York hasn't that very rare second version of Maria Marten's Red Barn over there, nor the little Frederick George Manning—he was the criminal Dickens saw hanged on the roof of the gaol in Horsemonger Lane, by the way—’}}
Usage notes
The comparative and superlative forms more unique'' and ''most unique'', as well as the use of ''unique'' with modifiers as in ''fairly unique'' and ''very unique , are sometimes proscribed, with the reasoning that either something is unique or it is not.Synonyms
(checksyns) * one of a kind * sui generis * singularDerived terms
* uniquenessNoun
(en noun)- The phoenix, the unique of birds.
