singular

—singularly, adv. —singularness, n.

/sing"gyeuh leuhr/, adj.

1. extraordinary; remarkable; exceptional: a singular success.

2. unusual or strange; odd; different: singular behavior.

3. being the only one of its kind; distinctive; unique: a singular example.

4. separate; individual.

5. Gram. noting or pertaining to a member of the category of number found in many languages that indicates that a word form has one referent or denotes one person, place, thing, or instance, as English boy and thing, which are singular nouns, or goes, a singular form of the verb go. Cf. dual (def. 4), plural (def. 4).

6. Logic.

a. of or pertaining to something individual, specific, or not general.

b. (of a proposition) containing no quantifiers, as "Socrates was mortal."

7. Math.

a. of or pertaining to a linear transformation from a vector space to itself that is not one-to-one.

b. of or pertaining to a matrix having a determinant equal to zero.

8. Obs. private.

9. Obs. single.

n. Gram.

10. the singular number.

11. a form in the singular.

[1300-50; ME < L singularis. See SINGLE, -AR¹]

Syn. 1-4. peculiar. 2. bizarre, queer, curious. 3. uncommon, rare. 4. single.

Ant. 1. usual.

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