When words lose their meanings, or those meanings get diluted, how are we supposed to express ourselves precisely? [...] if I wanted to express that something was one-of-a-kind, I'd much rather use a succinct term like ``unique'' (``singular'' has already gone by the wayside), but I cannot, because I'll have to qualify that, by ``unique'', I actually mean unique.

But I don't think the Hummer definition of "unique" loses you any of the original meaning. The semantics of "this thing is unique" don't change. It's just that with the Hummer definition we can also express "this thing is really unique". I wouldn't be arguing for the Hummer definition if I think it invalidated any semantics of the restrictive definition; but I think it preserves those semantics when "unique" is used unqualified. Surely changes that strictly increase the semantic range of the language are a Good Thing?

Peter