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291 points mooreds | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.21s | source
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pixelpoet ◴[] No.45291451[source]
> one of the only

That reminds me, I still have to put up the explanation at oneoftheonly.com for why this phrase doesn't make sense and is the new "could care less".

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idreyn ◴[] No.45291488[source]
I would like a non-native speaker to weigh in, but I gloss it as "there are ONLY a few and this is ONE OF them" and have never found that confusing or contradictory.
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pixelpoet ◴[] No.45291604[source]
That's exactly the difference: "one of the few" necessarily implies scarcity, whereas you could say e.g. "one of the only grains of sand at the beach" while clearly there are many.
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1. pests ◴[] No.45291721[source]
I wouldn’t use that phase for sand grains exactly because there are so many. If you added a qualification like “… that is colored blue” then it sounds fine again to me.