Posted on December 21st, 2002 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Pedantry.
(pedantic moment)
Now, Martha, you can have one of the few things, or you can have the only thing, but you can't have one of the only things. What would be the other of your only things?
I see this one a lot, and I'm convinced it's yet another one of those bits of "usage" that folks read and don't consider for themselves.
Besides the fact that much idiom isn't literal -- see footnote -- there is nothing literally the matter with "one of the only." For example, is there anything wrong with saying, "The only people who came to the party were Marge, Homer, and Barney"? How else would you compactly say it? Could you not then by extension say "Marge was one of the only people to come to the party"?
Anyway, the implied meaning is different than saying "one of the few." If you don't hear that, I'm not sure how to explain it. "One of the only" more emphatically emphasizes the lack of people; "one of the few" says less about whether "few" is an abnormal state especially worthy of comment.
(Footnote: Have you noticed that people mock the meaningless of new idiom while mindlessly repeating the literally absurd idiom they grew up with? My favorite example, these days, is the folks who sneer at "it's all good." "It is not all good," they say. Well sure, but is it all right?)
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