Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Still in existence; not destroyed, lost, or extinct: extant manuscripts.
- adj. Archaic Standing out; projecting.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Standing out or above any surface; protruding.
- Conspicuous; manifest; evident; publicly known.
- Now being; now subsisting; still existing; not destroyed or lost: as, the extant works of the Greek philosophers.
Wiktionary
- adj. Still in existence.
- adj. Currently existing; not having disappeared.
- adj. Still alive; not extinct.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Standing out or above any surface; protruded.
- adj. Still existing; not destroyed or lost; outstanding.
- adj. obsolete Publicly known; conspicuous.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. still in existence; not extinct or destroyed or lost
Etymologies
- First attested in 1545, from Latin extantem, from extō, from ex- ("out") + stō ("stand"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin exstāns, exstant-, present participle of exstāre, to stand out : ex-, ex- + stāre, to stand; see stā- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Every newly discovered species, extinct or extant, is a potential falsification.”
“The jaw bones in extant reptiles can transmit sound to the inner ear.”
“Well, there's somewhat of a Gap in extant organisms between humans and other apes.”
“How about making them remove and dispose of every “Obama/Biden” bumper sticker and sign in extant today?”
These ‘I regret my 2008 vote’ pieces are going to be excruciating… | RedState
“If you can't follow why it would be an evolutionary advantage in extant organisms, then there is no way to discuss the forces that led to its origin.”
“The nested hierarchy is pervasive in extant and extinct life, morphology and genomics.”
“No musical setting has survived for the words as they appear in extant published versions of the Obi melodrama.”
“The letters still extant from the princes of the East to Sapor are manifest forgeries; 151 nor is it natural to suppose that a jealous monarch should, even in the person of a rival, thus publicly degrade the majesty of kings.”
“The most ancient act of donation that pretends to be extant, is that of the emperor Lewis the Pious,”
“Note: The oldest Indian collection extant is the Pancha-tantra,”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘extant’.
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1100
abound, technology, branch of knowled..., prognosticate, automaton, matron, an older married ..., realm, special field of ..., kingdom, annals, historical records and 981 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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Mobying Along
looks like there's not an open Moby Dick list. So now there is.
hypos, Manhattoes, circumambulate, mole, grapnels, bowsprit, asphaltic, mazy, tranced, cataract, ungraspable, judgmatically and 227 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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words 1
Traduce, Ramify, precipitous, rapture, adumbrate, knell, smolder, vagary, choleric, sibylline, hypocritical, jejune and 135 more...
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Words from Blood Meridian
visage, affray, scullery, miasma, mirth, purlieu, tacit, benighted, wickiup, corral, amble, accoutre and 210 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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EN-HU - important words for a HU inte...
Words only (I left out the expressions) from Geza Kerenyi's EN-HU interpreters' dictionary. Most of them pose some difficulty when interpreted between HU and EN in either or both directions.
abalone, abrasive, abstractionist, abstruse, abysmal, academia, accessibility, accessible, acclimate, accolade, accompanist, achiever and 1469 more...
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wallace
Remington, Windsor, prorector, wen, aver, mottle, seltzer, tepee, lapidary, effete, sotto, presbyopia and 355 more...
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TECH - web application frameworks
object-oriented p..., ALGOL, validation, Erlang, markup language, Python, hibernate, framework, Apache, template, mapper, Java and 310 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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scholarly writing words
decrement, replete, impel, iterative, subsume, tacit, vex, denote, impart, ascertain, coalesce, extant and 49 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1896 more...
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magoosh1
aberration, aboveboard, abysmal, ace, affable, aghast, alacrity, ambiguous, ambivalent, ameliorate, amenable, amiable and 222 more...
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to memorize
words i need to memorize
aberrant, abscond, advocate, aggrandize, amalgamate, ambiguous, ambrosial, anomalous, antediluvian, antipathy, arbitrate, assuage and 163 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for extant.
jwjarvis these professional critiques can be supplemented and compared to the still extant defenses written by doctors and leaders of fraternal societies. Sep 14, 2010
chained_bear Or history. :) (Such as documents, records of specific events, etc.) It actually is not a simple synonym for existent, though the meanings overlap a bit. Jul 28, 2009
madmouth I thought that, these days, it's pretty domain-specific (referring to surviving artifacts within art or archaeology). Jul 28, 2009
milosrdenstvi I use this word all the time, mostly as a substitute for "existent". Jul 28, 2009
rolig For me this is still a very useful and usable word. I would be sorry to see it relegated to archaic status. And Smart's use of it here to mean "not yet extinct" is, well, very smart. Dec 31, 2007
brtom For all the creatures mentiond by Pliny are somewhere or other extant to the glory of God. (from Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart) Dec 31, 2007