Sui generis
Related: originality - unique - self
Contrast: categorization - genre
Genre-defying is a term used to denote a "work of art that is original, that defies classification, defies categorization."
Definition
Sui generis is a (post) Latin expression, literally meaning of its own gender/genus or unique in its characteristics. The expression was effectively created by scholastic philosophy to indicate an idea, an entity or a reality that cannot be included in a wider concept, and in the structure genus > species a species that heads its own genus. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sui_generis [May 2005]