one and only

1. 1.

   eminent beyond or above comparison

   “matchless beauty”

   “the team's nonpareil center fielder”

   “she's one girl in a million”

   “the one and only Muhammad Ali”

   “a peerless scholar”

   “infamy unmatched in the Western world”

   “wrote with unmatchable clarity”

   “unrivaled mastery of her art”

   Synonymsmatchlessnonpareilonepeerlessunmatchedunmatchableunrivaledunrivalled

   Similarincomparable

Questions about one and only

What does one and only mean?

one and only means "eminent beyond or above comparison".

What is another word for one and only?

Close synonyms include matchless, nonpareil, one, peerless, unmatched. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is one and only a common word?

one and only is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.