Dictionary
sin•gu•lar
Pronunciation: (sing'gyu-lur), [key]—
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.
1. the singular number.
2. a form in the singular.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.
