Word.ws English Dictionary

extremophile

/ɛkˈʃtɹiməˌfaɪ̯əl/

extremophile noun: any of many organisms that live under extreme conditions of temperature, pressure, salinity, etc; many are autotrophs; some are commercially important as a source of enzymes that operate under similar conditions.

Noun

extremophile (plural extremophiles)

  1. Any of many organisms that live under extreme conditions of temperature, pressure, salinity, etc; many are autotrophs; some are commercially important as a source of enzymes that operate under similar conditions.
    • They had found the world's first extremophiles – organisms that could live in water that had previously been assumed to be much too hot or acid or choked with sulphur to bear life.2003, Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, BCA, page 207
    • Lichens are 'extremophiles', organisms able to live, from our point of view, in other worlds.2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 95

Forms of extremophile

pluralextremophiles

Origin of extremophile

From extreme + -o- + -phile.

Words formed from extremophile

Questions about extremophile

What does extremophile mean?
Extremophile means any of many organisms that live under extreme conditions of temperature, pressure, salinity, etc; many are autotrophs; some are commercially important as a source of enzymes that operate under similar conditions.
What part of speech is extremophile?
Extremophile is a noun.
How do you pronounce extremophile?
Extremophile is pronounced /ɛkˈʃtɹiməˌfaɪ̯əl/ (US).
What is the plural of extremophile?
The plural of extremophile is extremophiles.

Words near extremophile in the dictionary

  1. extremly
  2. extremogram
  3. extremograms
  4. extremolyte
  5. extremolytes
  6. extremophile
  7. extremophiles
  8. extremophilia
  9. extremophilic
  10. extremophilous
  11. extremophily

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: extremophile (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)-StalJosA-Extremophile.wav.

Cite this entry: “extremophile.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/extremophile. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.