Unique vs Refine - What's the difference?
unique | refine |
(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
To reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; to free from impurities; to free from dross or alloy; to separate from extraneous matter; to purify
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= To purify from what is gross, coarse, vulgar, inelegant, low, and the like; to make elegant or excellent; to polish.
To become pure; to be cleared of feculent matter.
To improve in accuracy, delicacy, or excellence.
To affect nicety or subtlety in thought or language.
As an adjective unique
is (not comparable) 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.As a verb refine is
.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.
refine
English
Verb
(refin)Yesterday’s fuel, passage=The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania.