Extincting

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process of causing something to cease to exist or to bring an end to an organism, species, or practice; the act of eliminating or wiping out entirely; the state of being no longer active or continuing
2. Bringing about the complete disappearance or termination of a living form, custom, or condition; the method of causing something to die out or vanish; the condition of having stopped existing or functioning
3. The action of making a group, habit, or phenomenon vanish from existence; the effort to eradicate or abolish something completely; the status marked by absence due to no longer occurring or surviving

Etymology: "Extincting" is simply the -ing form of "extinct," so its story is really the story of the verb behind it. The root comes from Latin "extinguere," built from "ex-" meaning "out" and a stem meaning "to push," so the original image is of something pushed away or put out. In Latin, the word described snuffing out a flame or quenching a fire, and only later stretched to cover destroying or killing a person or a thing. English took the adjective "extinct" in the Late Middle English period, when it meant something like "extinguished" or "quenched," with fire still at the centre of it. Those senses survived for centuries alongside the newer meaning of a species or family line that has died out. Middle English also had a verb "extincten," which meant to put out a flame, destroy, suppress an uprising, or cancel a legal privilege, and it is from this verb, built on the adjective, that the modern sense of bringing something to an end draws its strength.

Synonyms: terminating, ending, abolishing, ceasing, quenching

Antonyms: creating, starting, initiating, preserving, continuing