Extinct

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ɪkˈstɪŋkt/, /É›kˈstɪŋkt/
• Rhymes: -ɪŋkt

Origin

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

Full definition of extinct

Adjective

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, Transformational grammar: a first course Chapter 5Indeed 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. (vulcanology) No longer actively erupting.Most of the volcanos on this island are now extinct.

Synonyms

• (volcanology: no longer erupting) dead

Antonyms

• (no longer alight) burning
• (having died out) extant
• (volcanology: no longer erupting) active, dormant

Related terms

• extinction
• extinctive
• extinguish

Further reading

• Webster 1913
• Century 1911