Nonpareil vs Incomparable - What's the difference?
nonpareil | incomparable |
Unequalled, unrivalled; unique.
* 1996 , (David Foster Wallace), Infinite Jest , Abacus 2013, p. 33:
A person or thing that has no equal; a paragon.
* c.1599-1601 , (William Shakespeare),
* , III.2.2.ii:
A small pellet of colored sugar used as decoration on baked goods and candy.
A small, flat chocolate drop covered with white pellets of sugar, similar to a comfit.
(obsolete, printing) A type size between minion and agate or ruby (roughly 6pt); nonpareille.
* 1881 May 19, Hermann Cohn, ,
So much better than another as to be beyond comparison; matchless or unsurpassed.
* , De Profundis , (1909), Robert Baldwin Ross, ed., page 112:
(rare) Not able to be compared.
As adjectives the difference between nonpareil and incomparable
is that nonpareil is unequalled, unrivalled; unique while incomparable is so much better than another as to be beyond comparison; matchless or unsurpassed.As a noun nonpareil
is a person or thing that has no equal; a paragon.nonpareil
English
(wikipedia nonpareil)Adjective
(en adjective)- A veritable artist, possessed of a deftness nonpareil with cotton swab and evacuation-hypo, the medical attaché is known among the shrinking upper classes of petro-Arab nations as the DeBakey of maxillofacial yeast […].
Noun
(en noun)Twelfth Night; or, What You Will,
- My lord and master loves you. O, such love / Could be but recompens'd though you were crown'd / The nonpareil of beauty!
- King John of France, once prisoner in England, came […] to see the Countess of Salisbury, the nonpareil of those times, and his dear mistress.
- I believe that letters which are less than a millimetre and a half (1/17 inch) high, will finally prove injurious to the eye. How little attention has hitherto been paid to this important subject is exemplified in the fact that even oculistic journals and books frequently contain nonpareil , or letters only a millimetre (1/25 inch) high.
See also
* (Nonpareils) *Synonyms
* (pellet of colored sugar) * hundreds and thousands ((UK), Australian'', ''plural only ) * sprinkles (probably US'', ''plural only )incomparable
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- I know of nothing in all drama more incomparable from the point of view of art, nothing more suggestive in its subtlety of observation, than Shakespeare's drawing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.