extinct

English

Etymology

Recorded since 1432; borrowed from Latin extinctus, the past participle of extinguere (“to put out, destroy, abolish, extinguish”), corresponding to ex- + stinguere (“to quench”)

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɪkˈstɪŋkt/, /ɛkˈstɪŋkt/
  • Rhymes: -ɪŋkt

Adjective

extinct (not comparable)

  1. (dated) Extinguished, no longer alight (of fire, candles etc.)
    Poor Edward's cigarillo was already extinct.
  2. No longer used; obsolete, discontinued.
    The title became extinct when the last baron died.
    Luckily, such ideas about race are extinct in current sociological theory.
    • 1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 5, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 275:
      Indeed the very fact that the English spelling system writes in there as two words but therein as one word might be taken as suggesting that only the former is a productive syntactic construction in Modern English, the latter being a now extinct construction which has left behind a few fossil remnants in the form of compound words such as thereby.
  3. No longer in existence; having died out.
    The dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years.
  4. (volcanology) No longer actively erupting.
    Most of the volcanos on this island are now extinct.

Synonyms

  • (volcanology: no longer erupting): dead

Antonyms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.

Further reading

  • extinct in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
  • extinct in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
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