Identity vs Unique - What's the difference?
identity | unique |
Sameness, identicalness; the quality or fact of (several specified things) being the same.
* 1997 , Hydrothermal Vent Fauna'', in ''Advances in Marine Biology: The Biogeography of the Oceans , page 111:
The difference or character that marks off an individual from the rest of the same kind, selfhood.
*
A name or persona—the mask or appearance one presents to the world—by which one is known.
Sense of who one is.
(algebra, computing) Any function which maps all elements of its domain to themselves.
(algebra) An element of an algebraic structure which, when applied to another element under an operation in that structure, yields this, second element.
(not comparable) Being the only one of its kind; unequaled, unparalleled or unmatched.
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*
* {{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 nouns the difference between identity and unique
is that identity is sameness, identicalness; the quality or fact of (several specified things) being the same while unique is a thing without a like; something unequalled or unparallelled.As an adjective unique is
(not comparable) being the only one of its kind; unequaled, unparalleled or unmatched.identity
English
(wikipedia identity)Noun
(identities)- This criminal has taken on several identities .
- I've been through so many changes, I have no sense of identity .
- This nation has a strong identity .
Synonyms
* selfhood * identity functionDerived terms
* additive identity * identity card * identity of indiscernibles * identity theft * law of identity * left identity * mistaken identity * multiplicative identity * personal identity * quasiidentity * right identityExternal 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.