Word.ws English Dictionary

extinctionism

UK/ɪkˈstɪŋkʃ(ə)nɪzəm/

extinctionism noun: the belief that only the extinction of humanity will lead to the recovery of the Earth's environment.

Noun

extinctionism (uncountable)

  1. The belief that only the extinction of humanity will lead to the recovery of the Earth's environment.
    • Philosopher Patricia MacCormack, who proudly dons the mantles of antinatalism and human extinctionism, finds herself “ambivalent about pessimism,” which she correctly regards as an overly masculine discourse.2018, Joseph Packer, Ethan Stoneman, A Feeling of Wrongness: Pessimistic Rhetoric on the Fringes of Popular Culture, Penn State Press, →ISBN
  2. The additional challenge, in playing a roguelike game, of killing all creatures to extinction.

Origin of extinctionism

From extinction + -ism.

Questions about extinctionism

What does extinctionism mean?
Extinctionism means the belief that only the extinction of humanity will lead to the recovery of the Earth's environment.
What part of speech is extinctionism?
Extinctionism is a noun.
How do you pronounce extinctionism?
Extinctionism is pronounced /ɪkˈstɪŋkʃ(ə)nɪzəm/ (UK).

Words near extinctionism in the dictionary

  1. extinction events
  2. extinction level event
  3. extinction level events
  4. extinction memories
  5. extinction memory
  6. extinctionism
  7. extinctionist
  8. extinctionists
  9. extinctions
  10. extinctive
  11. extinctively

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: extinctionism (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-extinctionism.wav.

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