The dual meanings of peculiar are in truth facets of one meaning. On the one side it means to be unique to the subject being discussed, on the other it means unusual or strange. But what is it to be unusual or strange except to be in some way unique, and to possess uniqueness can only mean be other than usual. These two facets when melded together create an ability to describe nigh near anything, for what cannot be whisked away under the far reaching umbrella of those descriptors? What cannot be buried underneath the innocuousness of peculiar? Simon and Garfunkle captured well this capacity for burial when they sang of a man's neighbors freeing themselves to ignore his loneliness and eventual suicide by simply simply dubbing him 'A Most Peculiar Man.' Or, to take a more startling example, there was the one time popular euphemism for slavery as 'The South's Peculiar Institution.'