# extinct

> English word · Adjective · IPA /ɪkˈstɪŋkt/ · frequency rank #11,889

## Definitions
1. Of fire, etc.: no longer alight; of a light, etc.: no longer shining; extinguished, quenched.
2. Of feelings, a person's spirit, a state of affairs, etc.: put out, as if like a fire; quenched, suppressed.
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. 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. Of a geological feature: no longer active; specifically, of a volcano: no longer erupting.
6. Of a radioisotope: no longer occurring primordially due to having decayed away completely, because it has a relatively short half-life.
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.

## Easily confused with
- **extract** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/extinct-vs-extract)
- **extent** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/extent-vs-extinct)
- **extant** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/extant-vs-extinct)

## Common misspellings (11)
`etxinct`, `exitnct`, `exticnt`, `extincct`, `extinctt`, `extinnct`, `extintc`, `extnict`, `exttinct`, `exxtinct`, `xetinct`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/extinct