Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of unika
Coloured illustration of unika
#1794 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

unique, one of a kind

Word origin

From Latin unicus, 'only, sole', built on unus ('one'). Esperanto borrowed the whole adjective from the international vocabulary rather than assembling it.

Origin
Latin
Root
unicus
English cognates
unique, unicorn, unit, union

Examples

.

Every person is unique.

.

That was a unique experience for us.

.

The museum has unique pictures from ancient times.

means one of a kind, the only one of its type in existence. It is not a synonym for "unusual", and it does not take or comfortably: a thing either is the only one or it is not. For merely unusual you want stranga or nekutima, and for remarkable, speciala.

Keep it apart from sola as well. is alone, on its own, the only one present: . is the only one that exists anywhere. and are different claims.

And the seam is false. You cannot build out of unu plus anything: Esperanto has no -ik- suffix that would do it, and unik- is a single unanalysable root. The Latin ancestors unus and unicus are of course related, so the resemblance is not pure coincidence, but that is history rather than word-building. To make an adjective from inside Esperanto you get , "first", which means something else entirely.

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Esperanto · Free printables

unika: worksheet, infographic and listicle

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This word is part of lesson 36.