Extraneous

Dictionary.com's word of the day is sui generis. Is it even possible to use the phrase "sui generis" without sounding unutterably pretentious?

Take, for instance, the three examples used to illustrate the word of the day:

This man, in fact, was sui generis, a true original.-- Ruth Lord, Henry F. du Pont and Winterthur

They're a special case, a category of their own, sui generis.-- Eric Kraft, Leaving Small's Hotel

In the degree of their alienation from their society and of their impact on it, the Russian intelligentsia of the nineteenth century were a phenomenon almost sui generis.-- Aileen M. Kelly, Toward Another Shore

William Randolph Hearst did not speak often of his father. He preferred to think of himself as sui generis and self-created, which in many ways he was.-- David Nasaw, The Chief

In all but one case the author has deemed it necessary to tautologise the phrase by way either of clarification or rhetorical effect. I am hard pressed to think of a single use of sui generis for which the word "unique" would not be an entirely adequate and less affected substitute.

I am all for foreign phrases where there is no easy English equivalent; schadenfreude, for example: a lovely, meaty word with a good, precise meaning for which, given our national proclivity for carping at the misfortunes of others, it's frankly astonishing we didn't have our own word before we appropriated the German one. Actually, thinking about it, maybe it's just the Latin that annoys me - sine qua non, anybody?

So yes, er: Latin. Handle with care.

tags: clichés, Latin, dictums