extinction

American  

[ik-stingk-shuhn] / ɪkˈstɪŋk ʃən /

noun

1. the act of extinguishing.

2. the fact or condition of being extinguished or extinct.

3. suppression; abolition; annihilation.

   the extinction of an army.

4. Biology. the act or process of becoming extinct; a coming to an end or dying out.

   the extinction of a species.

5. Psychology. the reduction or loss of a conditioned response as a result of the absence or withdrawal of reinforcement.

6. Astronomy. the diminution in the intensity of starlight caused by absorption as it passes through the earth's atmosphere or through interstellar dust.

7. Crystallography, Optics. the darkness that results from rotation of a thin section to an angle extinction angle at which plane-polarized light is absorbed by the polarizer.

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extinction British  

/ ɪkˈstɪŋkʃən /

noun

1. the act of making extinct or the state of being extinct

2. the act of extinguishing or the state of being extinguished

3. complete destruction; annihilation

4. physics reduction of the intensity of radiation as a result of absorption or scattering by matter

5. astronomy the dimming of light from a celestial body as it passes through an absorbing or scattering medium, such as the earth's atmosphere or interstellar dust

6. psychol a process in which the frequency or intensity of a learned response is decreased as a result of reinforcement being withdrawn Compare habituation

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extinction Scientific  

/ ĭk-stĭngk′shən /

1. The fact of being extinct or the process of becoming extinct.

2. See more at background extinction mass extinction

3. A progressive decrease in the strength of a conditioned response, often resulting in its elimination, because of withdrawal of a specific stimulus.

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extinction Cultural  

1. The disappearance of a species from the Earth.

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Discover More

The fossil record tells us that 99.9 percent of all species that ever lived are now extinct.

Other Word Forms

• nonextinction noun
• preextinction noun
• self-extinction noun

Etymology

Origin of extinction

1375–1425; late Middle English extinccio ( u ) n < Latin ex ( s ) tinctiōn- (stem of ex ( s ) tinctiō ). See extinct, -ion

Example Sentences

He says not all zoos will survive but describes the birth of a critically-endangered Amur leopard at Dartmoor Zoo - a species on the brink of extinction - as "the apex of our achievement".

From BBC

Meanwhile, on Moltbook, the AI agents - or perhaps humans with robotic masks on - continue to chatter, and not all the talk is of human extinction.

From BBC

Walruses have been officially protected in Norway since the 1950s, after they were hunted to near extinction.

From BBC

Puffins are listed as vulnerable to extinction on the global International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List.

From BBC

A deep-water fish called coelacanth similarly survived the mass extinction that wiped out all the dinosaurs that did not evolve into birds, he pointed out.

From Barron's

Related Words

• annihilation
• destruction
• elimination
• obsolescence