extinction
/ɪkˈstɪŋkʃən/
extinction noun: the action of making or becoming extinct; annihilation.
Noun
extinction (countable and uncountable, plural extinctions)
- The action of making or becoming extinct; annihilation.
- Thirteen long centuries have elapsed since the extinction of the last Zoroastrian Empire[…]1922, Maneckji Nusservanji Dhalla, Zoroastrian Civilization, page 41
- Their lives were short; all were condemned by the early 1930s, presumably because, like most classes of G.S.W.R. engines, their small numbers invited extinction under any comprehensive programme of standardisation.1951 November, David R. Webb, “The Drummond 4-4-0 Locomotives”, in Railway Magazine, page 773
- The absorption or scattering of electromagnetic radiation emitted by astronomical objects by intervening dust and gas before it reaches the observer.
- The inability to perceive multiple stimuli simultaneously.
- The fading of a conditioned response over time if it is not reinforced.
extinction meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
extinction in Hindi
- the action of making or becoming extinct
- विलुप्त vilupt
extinction in Tamil
- அழிவு, அழிதல்
extinction in Marathi
- extinction, exhaustion
- संहार sauhār
extinction in Urdu
- عدم, فنا, نابودگی, نیستی
More languagesFewer languages
- extinction in Bengali
- লোপ lōp, বিনাশ binaś
- extinction in Malayalam
- വംശനാശം, കൂട്ടവംശനാശം, നാശം, ഉത്സാദം
- extinction in Kannada
- ಅಳಿವು, ನಾಶ, ಸಾವು, ಕುಂದಿರುವಿಕೆ
- extinction in Sanskrit
- नशन naśana
- extinction in Nepali
- विलुप्तता
- extinction in Tagalog
- paglipol, lipol, pagkalipol
- extinction in Arabic
- اِنْقِرَاض inqirāḍ
- extinction in Malay
- kepupusan
- extinction in Indonesian
- kepunahan
- extinction in Thai
- การสูญพันธุ์ gaan-sǔun-pan
Examples of extinction in a sentence
- The extinction of a species once so numerous seemed incredible.1955, A. W. Schorger, The Passenger Pigeon: Its Natural History and Extinction, →ISBN, page vii:
- We may see many such [dust] storms in the decades ahead, along with species extinctions, radical disturbance of ecosystems, and intensified social conflict over land and water.2012 January, Donald Worster, “A Drier and Hotter Future”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 26...
- On the East and West Coast Main Lines in the 1950s/60s, for example, we saw the extinction of intermediate stations in order to create the same sort of accelerations that IRP is now promising.2022 January 12, Nigel Harris, “Comment: Unhappy start to 2022”, in RAIL, number 948, page 3:
- In Perthshire, the Aberdeenshire catchments of Deeside and Donside, in Moray and Nairnshire to the north-east, the populations are in low single figures, putting them on the brink of local extinction.2023 June 17, Severin Carrell, “Dancing Capercaillie bird makes a tentative comeback in Scotland”, in The Guardian:
Forms of extinction
| plural | extinctions |
|---|
Origin of extinction
From late Middle English, borrowed from Latin extinctio (“extinction, annihilation”), from extinguere, past participle extinctus (“to extinguish”); see extinguish.
Words formed from extinction
- age of extinction
- extinction burst
- extinction event → Triassic-Jurassic extinction event
- extinction level event
- extinction memory
- interstellar extinction
- K-T extinction event
- language extinction
- mass extinction
- partial discharge extinction voltage
- Permian-Triassic extinction
- coextinction
- Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event
- de-extinction
- extinctionism
- extinctionist
- hemiextinction
- nonextinction
- pseudoextinction
- semiextinction
Phrases with extinction
Questions about extinction
- What does extinction mean?
- Extinction means the action of making or becoming extinct; annihilation.
- What is extinction in Hindi?
- Extinction in Hindi is विलुप्त (vilupt). See Extinction meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use extinction in a sentence?
- The extinction of a species once so numerous seemed incredible.
- What part of speech is extinction?
- Extinction is a noun.
- How do you pronounce extinction?
- Extinction is pronounced /ɪkˈstɪŋkʃən/.
- What is the plural of extinction?
- The plural of extinction is extinctions.
Words near extinction in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: extinction (page history and authors); extinction (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); संहार (Marathi) (page history and authors); extinction (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); বিনাশ (Bengali) (page history and authors); extinction (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); extinction (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); नशन (Sanskrit) (page history and authors); extinction (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-extinction.wav.
Cite this entry: “extinction.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/extinction. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.