SINGULARITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does singularity mean? 

• SINGULARITY (noun)
  The noun SINGULARITY has 2 senses:

1. the quality of being one of a kind

2. strangeness by virtue of being remarkable or unusual

  Familiarity information: SINGULARITY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SINGULARITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of being one of a kind

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

singularity; uniqueness

Context example:

that singularity distinguished him from all his companions

Hypernyms ("singularity" is a kind of...):

individualism; individuality; individuation (the quality of being individual)

Derivation:

singular (being a single and separate person or thing)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Strangeness by virtue of being remarkable or unusual

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("singularity" is a kind of...):

strangeness; unfamiliarity (unusualness as a consequence of not being well known)

Derivation:

singular (beyond or deviating from the usual or expected)

singular (unusual or striking)

 Context examples 

There will be nothing singular in his case; and it is singularity which often makes the worst part of our suffering, as it always does of our conduct.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Singularity is almost invariably a clue.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But the last singularity explains the first, as I intimated once before: you, with your gravity, considerateness, and caution were made to be the recipient of secrets.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

However, for the reasons I had offered, but chiefly to gratify the king of Luggnagg by an uncommon mark of his favour, he would comply with the singularity of my humour; but the affair must be managed with dexterity, and his officers should be commanded to let me pass, as it were by forgetfulness.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I gave due praises to every thing I saw, whereof his excellency took not the least notice till after supper; when, there being no third companion, he told me with a very melancholy air that he doubted he must throw down his houses in town and country, to rebuild them after the present mode; destroy all his plantations, and cast others into such a form as modern usage required, and give the same directions to all his tenants, unless he would submit to incur the censure of pride, singularity, affectation, ignorance, caprice, and perhaps increase his majesty’s displeasure; that the admiration I appeared to be under would cease or diminish, when he had informed me of some particulars which, probably, I never heard of at court, the people there being too much taken up in their own speculations, to have regard to what passed here below.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

But I could have easily vindicated humankind from the imputation of singularity upon the last article, if there had been any swine in that country (as unluckily for me there were not), which, although it may be a sweeter quadruped than a Yahoo, cannot, I humbly conceive, in justice, pretend to more cleanliness; and so his honour himself must have owned, if he had seen their filthy way of feeding, and their custom of wallowing and sleeping in the mud.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)