Word.ws English Dictionary

extinctive

extinctive adjective: tending or serving to extinguish, or make extinct.

Adjective

extinctive (comparative more extinctive, superlative most extinctive)

  1. Tending or serving to extinguish, or make extinct.
    • Even with mild degrees of anxiety the ineffectiveness of the extinctive mechanism is striking.1958, Joseph Wolpe, Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition

Forms of extinctive

comparativemore extinctive
superlativemost extinctive

Origin of extinctive

From extinct + -ive.

Words formed from extinctive

Questions about extinctive

What does extinctive mean?
Extinctive means tending or serving to extinguish, or make extinct.
What part of speech is extinctive?
Extinctive is an adjective.

Words near extinctive in the dictionary

  1. extinction memory
  2. extinctionism
  3. extinctionist
  4. extinctionists
  5. extinctions
  6. extinctive
  7. extinctively
  8. extinctness
  9. extinctor
  10. extinctors
  11. extincts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: extinctive (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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