A unanimous decision is one that every single person agreed to, with nobody against it. Twelve jurors coming back with the same verdict; a committee where every hand goes up and none stays down.
It describes the decision itself, as in a unanimous vote or a unanimous verdict, and it describes the people, as in the board was unanimous. With the people you follow it with IN: the neighbours were unanimous in wanting the tree kept. One vote the other way and the word is gone, which is why near-unanimous exists and why reports fall back on all but one. The adverb is unanimously, as in the motion passed unanimously, and the noun is unanimity, which moves its stress and catches everybody out. Say the adjective yoo-NAN-i-mus, with the weight on the NAN.
Unanimous is Latin unanimus, of one mind, made from unus, one, and animus, the mind or spirit. English already had a word for it, anmod, and dropped it in favour of the Latin. The picture inside the word is exact: a room full of people with a single mind between them.
Latin
ūnanimus
English, today
unanimous
From Latin ūnanimus. From Latin ūnanimus (“of one mind”), from ūnus + animus. Displaced native ānmōd.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Adjectives, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.
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