endling
/ˈɛndlɪŋ/
endling noun: the last individual of its species or subspecies, which therefore becomes extinct upon its death.
Noun
endling (plural endlings)
- The last individual of its species or subspecies, which therefore becomes extinct upon its death.
- The last known survivor, the endling of its species, is now stuffed and mounted in a museum in the remote, dusty city of Nukus.2002, SEJ Journal
- Endlings are also recorded for the quagga, an equine with zebra-like stripes on its front half, which died in 1883 in a zoo in Amsterdam; a Caspian tiger killed in the 1950s in Uzbekistan; and whichever of a pair of great auks killed in 1844 off the coast of Iceland died second.2012 June 27, Helen Lewis, “Sense of an endling”, in New Statesman, archived from the original on 11 Jul 2012
- Synonyms:
- lastling
Synonyms of endling
Forms of endling
| plural | endlings |
|---|
Origin of endling
From end + -ling, suggested in a 1996 issue of the magazine Nature.
Questions about endling
- What does endling mean?
- Endling means the last individual of its species or subspecies, which therefore becomes extinct upon its death.
- What part of speech is endling?
- Endling is a noun.
- How do you pronounce endling?
- Endling is pronounced /ˈɛndlɪŋ/.
- What is the plural of endling?
- The plural of endling is endlings.
Words near endling in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: endling (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “endling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/endling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.