Adjective

(en adjective)

Not expected, anticipated or foreseen.

* , title=The Mirror and the Lamp

, chapter=2 citation , passage=She was a fat, round little woman, richly apparelled in velvet and lace, […]; and the way she laughed, cackling like a hen, the way she talked to the waiters and the maid, […]—all these unexpected phenomena impelled one to hysterical mirth, and made one class her with such immortally ludicrous types as Ally Sloper, the Widow Twankey, or Miss Moucher.}}

*

The windmill presented unexpected difficulties.

Adjective

(en adjective)

Being only one of a larger population.

A singular experiment cannot be regarded as scientific proof of the existence of a phenomenon.

Being the only one of the kind; unique.

She has a singular personality.

* Addison

These busts of the emperors and empresses are all very scarce, and some of them almost singular in their kind.

* Chaucer

And God forbid that all a company / Should rue a singular man's folly.

(Francis Bacon)

Distinguished by superiority; eminent; extraordinary; exceptional.

a man of singular gravity or attainments

Out of the ordinary; curious.

It was very singular ; I don't know why he did it.

* Denham

So singular a sadness / Must have a cause as strange as the effect.

* Milton

His zeal / None seconded, as out of season judged, / Or singular and rash.

(grammar) Referring to only one thing or person.

(linear algebra, of matrix) Having no inverse.

(linear algebra, of transformation) Having the property that the matrix of coefficients of the new variables has a determinant equal to zero.

(set theory, of a cardinal number) Not equal to its own .

(legal) Each; individual.

to convey several parcels of land, all and singular

(obsolete) Engaged in by only one on a side; single.

* Holinshed

to try the matter thus together in a singular combat