extinct.
Of fire, etc.: no longer alight; of a light, etc.: no longer shining; extinguished, quenched.
Meaning & usage
Of fire, etc.: no longer alight; of a light, etc.: no longer shining; extinguished, quenched.
Edward’s cigarillo was extinct by the time he had finished talking.
Of feelings, a person's spirit, a state of affairs, etc.: put out, as if like a fire; quenched, suppressed.
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.
Luckily, such ideas about race are extinct in current sociological theory.
The title became extinct when the last baron died.
Of an animal or plant species or group of species, a group of people, a family, etc., having no living members, representatives, or descendants.
Dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years.
Of a geological feature: no longer active; specifically, of a volcano: no longer erupting.
Most of the volcanos on this island are now extinct.
They found the sites of extinct geysers.
Of a radioisotope: no longer occurring primordially due to having decayed away completely, because it has a relatively short half-life.
Of a person: dead; also, permanently separated from others.
Where this word comes from
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.
Synonym of extinguish. To stop (fire, etc.) from burning; also, to stop (light, etc.) from shining; to put out, to quench.
Synonym of extinguish. To kill (someone).
Synonym of extinguish. To put an end to (something) completely; to annihilate, to destroy.
Synonym of extinguish. To put an end to (something) completely; to annihilate, to destroy. To cause (an animal or plant species) to die out completely or become extinct (adjective etymology 1 sense 2.3).
Synonym of extinguish. To suppress (something, as feelings, a person's spirit, a state of affairs, etc.); to quench.
Synonym of extinguish. To abolish or make void (a law, a legal right, etc.); also, to cancel (a creditor's claim, a license, etc.).
Where this word comes from
From Middle English extincten (“to extinguish or put out (a fire, light, etc.); to destroy, kill; (figurative) to suppress (an uprising); (law) to quash or stop (legal proceedings); to cancel (a privilege, title, etc.); (medicine) to eliminate or reduce (inflammation, an ulcer, etc.)”), from extinct (adjective) (see etymology 1) + -en (suffix forming the infinitive of verbs).
Synonym of extinction (“the action of becoming or making extinct; annihilation”).
Where this word comes from
Either: * from Latin extīnctus, exstīnctus, a noun use of the perfect passive participle of extinguō, exstinguō (see etymology 1); or * from the verb (see etymology 2).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.