extinct

Where “extinct” sits in English frequency

Definition

1. 1
   Of fire, etc.: no longer alight; of a light, etc.: no longer shining; extinguished, quenched.
2. 2
   Of feelings, a person's spirit, a state of affairs, etc.: put out, as if like a fire; quenched, suppressed.
3. 3
   Of customs, ideas, laws and legal rights, offices, organizations, languages, etc.: no longer existing or in use; defunct, discontinued, obsolete; specifically, of a title of nobility: no longer having any person qualified to hold it.
4. 4
   Of an animal or plant species or group of species, a group of people, a family, etc., having no living members, representatives, or descendants.
5. 5
   Of a geological feature: no longer active; specifically, of a volcano: no longer erupting.
6. 6
   Of a radioisotope: no longer occurring primordially due to having decayed away completely, because it has a relatively short half-life.
7. 7
   Of a person: dead; also, permanently separated from others.

Etymology

From Late Middle English extinct (“eliminated, eradicated, extinguished”), from Latin extīnctus, exstīnctus (“extinguished, quenched; destroyed, killed; made extinct”), the perfect passive participles of extinguō, exstinguō (“to extinguish, put out, quench; (figurative) to abolish; to destroy, kill”), from ex- (prefix meaning ‘away; out’) + stinguō (“to extinguish, put out, quench”) (from Proto-Indo-European *stengʷ- (“to push”)). The Middle English word displaced Middle English aqueint, aquenched (“extinct; extinguished”). Doublet of extinguish.

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: etxinct,exitnct,exticnt,extincct,extinctt,extinnct,extintc,extnict,exttinct,exxtinct,xetinct

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of extinct - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.

Frequently Asked Questions