extant

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
13
Words With Friends
14
Letters
6
Pronunciation
/ˈɛk.stənt/ (US)
See all 4 pronunciations
/ˈɛk.stənt/ (US) · /ɛkˈstænt/ (US) · /ɛkˈstænt/ (UK) · /ˈɛk.stənt/ (UK)

Definition of extant

3 senses · 1 part of speech · etymology included

adj

  1. (not-comparable)Still in existence; not having disappeared.
    “extant manuscripts of the Old Testament”
    “During the whole time of his abode in the university he generally spent thirteen hours of the day in study; by which assiduity besides an exact dispatch of the whole course of philosophy, he read over in a manner all classic authors that are extant[…]”
    “This English Nation, will it get to know the meaning of its strange new Today? Is there sense enough extant, discoverable anywhere or anyhow, in our united twenty-seven million heads to discern the same; valour enough in our twenty-seven million hearts to dare and do the bidding thereof?”
    “There are many narrow-gauge systems still extant.”
    “Demetreius of Phalerum, a peripatetic philosopher of the fourth century B.C., wrote an amatory treatise entitled Eroticus - no longer, however, extant.”
See all 3 definitions

adj

  1. (not-comparable)Still in existence; not having disappeared.
    “extant manuscripts of the Old Testament”
    “During the whole time of his abode in the university he generally spent thirteen hours of the day in study; by which assiduity besides an exact dispatch of the whole course of philosophy, he read over in a manner all classic authors that are extant[…]”
    “This English Nation, will it get to know the meaning of its strange new Today? Is there sense enough extant, discoverable anywhere or anyhow, in our united twenty-seven million heads to discern the same; valour enough in our twenty-seven million hearts to dare and do the bidding thereof?”
    “There are many narrow-gauge systems still extant.”
    “Demetreius of Phalerum, a peripatetic philosopher of the fourth century B.C., wrote an amatory treatise entitled Eroticus - no longer, however, extant.”
  2. (not-comparable)Still alive; not extinct.
    “birds are the only extant dinosaurs”
    “I reckon that this one Duke of Weimar did more for the Culture of his Nation than all the English Dukes and Duces now extant, or that were extant since Henry the Eighth gave them the Church Lands to eat, have done for theirs![…]”
  3. (not-comparable, obsolete)Standing out, or above the rest.
    “[W]hereas in ſmall fragments or plates, the Ice, though it ſink not to the bottom of the water, will oftentimes ſink so low in it, as ſcarce to leave any part evidently extant above the ſurface of the water, in vaſt quantities of Ice, that extancy is ſometimes ſo conſpicuous, that Navigators in their Voyages to Iſland, Greenland, and other frozen Regions, complain of meeting with lumps, or rather floating rocks of Ice, as high as their main Maſts.”

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

First attested in 1545, from Latin extantem, extāns, present participle of extō (“to stand out, exist, be extant”), from ex- (“out”) + stō (“stand”).

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