extract
Americanverb (used with object)
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to get, pull, or draw out, usually with special effort, skill, or force.
to extract a tooth.
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to deduce (a doctrine, principle, interpretation, etc.).
He extracted a completely personal meaning from what was said.
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to derive or obtain (pleasure, comfort, etc.) from a particular source.
He extracted satisfaction from the success of his sons.
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to take or copy out (matter), as from a book.
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to make excerpts from (a book, pamphlet, etc.).
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to extort (information, money, etc.).
to extract a secret from someone.
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to separate or obtain (a juice, ingredient, etc.) from a mixture by pressure, distillation, treatment with solvents, or the like.
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Mathematics.
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to determine (the root of a quantity that has a single root).
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to determine (a root of a quantity that has multiple roots).
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noun
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something extracted.
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a passage taken from a book, article, etc.; excerpt; quotation.
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a solution or preparation containing the active principles of a drug, plant juice, or the like; concentrated solution.
vanilla extract.
- Synonyms:
- distillation, decoction
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a solid, viscid, or liquid substance extracted from a plant, drug, or the like, containing its essence in concentrated form.
beef extract.
verb
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to withdraw, pull out, or uproot by force
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to remove or separate
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to derive (pleasure, information, etc) from some source or situation
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to deduce or develop (a doctrine, policy, etc)
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informal to extort (money, etc)
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to obtain (a substance) from a mixture or material by a chemical or physical process, such as digestion, distillation, the action of a solvent, or mechanical separation
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to cut out or copy out (an article, passage, quotation, etc) from a publication
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to determine the value of (the root of a number)
noun
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something extracted, such as a part or passage from a book, speech, etc
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a preparation containing the active principle or concentrated essence of a material
beef extract
yeast extract
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pharmacol a solution of plant or animal tissue containing the active principle
Usage
Extract is sometimes wrongly used where extricate would be better: he will find it difficult extricating (not extracting ) himself from this situation
Synonym Usage
Extract, exact, extort, wrest imply using force to remove something. To extract is to draw forth something as by pulling, importuning, or the like: to extract a confession by torture. To exact is to impose a penalty, or to obtain by force or authority, something to which one lays claim: to exact payment. To extort is to wring something by intimidation or threats from an unwilling person: to extort money by threats of blackmail. To wrest is to take by force or violence in spite of active resistance: The courageous minority wrested power from their oppressors.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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extractabilitynoun
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extractibilitynoun
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overextractverb (used with object)
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preextractverb (used with object)
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extractableadjective
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extractibleadjective
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nonextractableadjective
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nonextractedadjective
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nonextractibleadjective
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unextractableadjective
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unextractedadjective
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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extractsimple
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extractssimple
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have extractedperfect
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has extractedperfect
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am extractingprogressive
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are extractingprogressive
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is extractingprogressive
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have been extractingperfect progressive
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has been extractingperfect progressive
Past
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extractedsimple
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had extractedperfect
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was extractingprogressive
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were extractingprogressive
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had been extractingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of extract
First recorded in 1475–1500; from Latin extractus (past participle of extrahere ). See ex- 1, tract 1
Explanation
When you extract something, you remove it from a larger whole. You can extract a passage from a book, or a liquid essence from a vanilla bean—vanilla extract. Ex- means out of, and when you extract, you draw something out of something else. When listening to a complicated and long-winded story, it can be difficult to extract the truly meaningful details.
Vocabulary lists containing extract
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, Chapters 12–15
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Words to Know Before You Defrost the Bird
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Tech companies extract information from books, news articles and Wikipedia pages, which copyright holders said is often done without consent, compensation or control over how it is used.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
But to keep investors happy, Netflix needs to extract more revenue per subscriber.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 14, 2026
More than 50 years ago, physicist Sir Roger Penrose proposed a remarkable idea: under the right conditions, it might be possible to extract energy from a rapidly spinning black hole.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 12, 2026
She took on Ecclestone effectively down the ground, with England's spinners unable to extract as much turn from the surface to put doubt in the batters' minds.
From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026
In eating the plants we combine the carbohydrates with oxygen dissolved in our blood because of our penchant for breathing air, and so extract the energy that makes us go.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
“They use the words ‘credit repair,’ but what’s really happening here is a negative option that extracts fees from people with the assumption that most people wanted this.”
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 2, 2026
Hamilton Lane has also gotten heat External link for booking profits on the discounts it extracts when acquiring pieces of private-equity and credit funds from other investors.
From Barron's ● May 28, 2026
With support from FAPESP, the researchers first isolated and characterized extracts from the leaves that were rich in galloylquinic acids.
From Science Daily ● May 7, 2026
A more powerful approach, called shotgun sequencing, extracts genetic material from a patient’s samples and runs it through a machine that can flag an unknown pathogen.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 6, 2026
Everything we sold was enriched with antioxidants or enhanced with natural super-fruit extracts or formulated for health and beauty.
From "Darius the Great Is Not Okay" by Adib Khorram
The furnaces operate at extreme temperatures, with iron ore and coking coal poured in at the top and liquid iron extracted at the bottom.
From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026
The liver is then extracted and treated before serving, perhaps pan-seared or smeared cold on bread.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 13, 2026
The metal is extracted from minerals and rocks such as bauxite and does not occur naturally in its pure form.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 9, 2026
With Guthrie missing, the FBI extracted and released doorbell camera images of an armed and masked man outside her home on the morning of her disappearance.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2026
Produced by boiling juice extracted from sugarcane, it has long been used in making rum, as a major ingredient in making explosives, and as a sweetener.
From "1919 The Year That Changed America" by Martin W. Sandler
"In Sweden our possibilities for extracting REE, even when compared internationally, are relatively good," he says.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 24, 2026
In June, Anthropic accused Chinese e-commerce and tech giant Alibaba of "illicitly" extracting the capabilities of its Claude AI models using distillation attacks.
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026
“For these guys,” Banks said, the goal “is extraction,” and “what they’re extracting is not just our money, but our data.”
From Salon ● Jul. 20, 2026
For Waste Management’s WM Recycling unit, automation is viewed as the key to extracting more profit by slashing labor costs.
From Barron's ● Jun. 17, 2026
Agriculture, Meggers pointed out, depends on extracting the wealth of the soil.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
