Traditionally so-called absolute adjectives such as unique are considered non-gradable and, therefore should not be used in comparative constructions or with degree modifiers. However, this conflicts with the actual usage of unique since the term seems to have aquired an additional, weakened meaning. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the usage of the adjective unique in written British English. First, I wanted to know if the use of unique had increased between 1996 and 2005, and for this purpose a corpus investigation was carried out. The most common collocations were identified in order to trace changes in the collocational patterns. Second, I wished to find out if there had been an increase in the usage of a weakened sense of unique at the expense of the traditional meaning. In this part of the study, unique with degree modifiers and in comparative constructions were examined. Finally, I divided the collocations of this search into different fields based on context aiming to look for changes in the areas in which the modified unique occurred. The investigation showed that the use of unique has become more common with an increase of 74%. As to the collocational patterns, the study did not reveal any obvious changes. The second part of the study showed that the share of instances where unique occurred with a degree modifier or in a comparative construction was rather constant. Considering the choice of modifier, however, there was a greater variety of modifiers in 2005. Further, the study revealed that there was an increase of pre-modified unique in the context of Culture. Due to the limitation of scope, and the fact that there were no obvious changes as to the collocational patterns, it is difficult to draw any conclusions about the increase. Nevertheless, the results suggest that there might have been a widening of the sense of unique as well. Further studies, however, have to confirm that.