Word of the Day:
extinction
What It Means
The action of making or becoming extinct; annihilation.
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.
Extinction in Context
“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.”
Did You Know?
From late Middle English, borrowed from Latin extinctio (“extinction, annihilation”), from extinguere, past participle extinctus (“to extinguish”); see extinguish.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: extinction (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “extinction.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/extinction. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
