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Ultimate vs Unique - What's the difference?

ultimate | unique |

As adjectives the difference between ultimate and unique

is that ultimate is final; last in a series while unique is (not comparable) being the only one of its kind; unequaled, unparalleled or unmatched.

As nouns the difference between ultimate and unique

is that ultimate is the most basic or fundamental of a set of things while unique is a thing without a like; something unequalled or unparallelled.

ultimate

English

Adjective

(wikipedia ultimate) (-)
  • Final; last in a series.
  • * {{quote-book
  • , year= 1677 , isbn= , date= , author= (Robert Plot) , title= The natural history of Oxford-shire: Being an Essay Toward the Natural History of England , url= http://books.google.com/books?id=EUqd_M1x40QC&pg=PA15 , page= 15 , chapter= Of the Heavens and Air , passage= }}
  • (of a syllable) Last in a word or other utterance.
  • Being the greatest possible; maximum; most extreme.
  • the ultimate pleasure
    the ultimate disappointment
  • *
  • Hepaticology, outside the temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere, still lies deep in the shadow cast by that ultimate "closet taxonomist," Franz Stephani—a ghost whose shadow falls over us all.
  • Being the most distant or extreme; farthest.
  • That will happen at some time; eventual.
  • Last in a train of progression or consequences; tended toward by all that precedes; arrived at, as the last result; final.
  • * Coleridge
  • those ultimate truths and those universal laws of thought which we cannot rationally contradict
  • Incapable of further analysis; incapable of further division or separation; constituent; elemental.
  • an ultimate constituent of matter

    Antonyms

    * proximate

    Derived terms

    * antepenultimate * penultimate * ultimateness

    Coordinate terms

    * (syllable adjectives)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The most basic or fundamental of a set of things
  • The final or most distant point; the conclusion
  • The greatest extremity; the maximum
  • (uncountable) The sport of ultimate frisbee.
  • Anagrams

    * ----

    unique

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (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 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—’}}
  • *
  • *
  • 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}}

    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 * singular

    Derived terms

    * uniqueness

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A thing without a like; something unequalled or unparallelled.
  • * De Quincey
  • The phoenix, the unique of birds.