extant

adjective

ex·​tant ˈek-stənt How to pronounce extant (audio) ek-ˈstant How to pronounce extant (audio)
ˈek-ˌstant
1
a
: currently or actually existing
the most charming writer extantG. W. Johnson
b
: still existing : not destroyed or lost
extant manuscripts
2
archaic : standing out or above

Examples of extant in a Sentence

There is, he reports, no extant copy of the Super Bowl I television broadcast; nobody bothered to keep the tapes. Joe Queenan, New York Times Book Review, 1 Feb. 2009
First produced in the spring of 472 BC, Persians is noteworthy in the corpus of the thirty-two extant Greek tragedies in that it is the only classical Greek drama that dramatizes an actual historical event. Daniel Mendelsohn, New York Review, 21 Sept. 2006
[George] Lucas' brain teemed with plots and characters, exotic creatures, worlds to be spun out of the words and sketches in his notebooks. Also, by numbering the extant episodes IV, V and VI, he was implicitly promising a prequel trilogy … Richard Corliss, Time, 9 May 2005
There are few extant records from that period. one of the oldest buildings still extant
Recent Examples on the Web The oldest extant work of world theatre is a generous lesson in war and in imaginative sympathy, still waiting to be learned. Claudia Roth Pierpont, The New Yorker, 19 Feb. 2024 Brodin’s return shifts attention to the team’s major extant injury absence, veteran defenseman and team captain Jared Spurgeon, who missed his 27th game this season. John Shipley, Twin Cities, 16 Jan. 2024 Which is in part to say, Lonnie’s lived through enough epochs of drug dealing to know the immense extant dangers for his posterity. Mitchell S. Jackson, New York Times, 20 Dec. 2023 Despite that, its striking resemblance to extant ascidiacean tunicates like C. intestinalis has convinced Nanglu that early tunicates were most likely sessile, just like their descendants. Elizabeth Rayne, Ars Technica, 16 July 2023 About 225 million years ago, at the very dawn of mammalian existence, the creatures that humans and all other extant mammals would descend from were diminutive creatures about the size of a shrew. Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 2 Jan. 2024 This year ended with both the Eras and Renaissance tour films landing in movie theaters, offering another hyper-realistic adventure that asked audiences to watch a screen depicting Taylor Swift and Beyoncé projected on another screen inside the screen—at a remove from the extant remove. Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Pitchfork, 13 Dec. 2023 Vermeer The great Vermeer show in Amsterdam, which included 28 of the artist’s 37 extant works, was highly anticipated and quickly sold out, even with the Rijksmuseum’s extended hours. Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 5 Dec. 2023 When the House passed into the hands of Republicans in January, Carlson and McCarthy quickly jumped back into Trump’s bunker together, in a joint attempt to remix extant footage from that day in order to cast the insurrectionists in a more favorable light. Alex Thomas, The New Republic, 7 Apr. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'extant.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Latin exstant-, exstans, present participle of exstare to stand out, be in existence, from ex- + stare to stand — more at stand

First Known Use

1545, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Time Traveler
The first known use of extant was in 1545

Dictionary Entries Near extant

Cite this Entry

“Extant.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extant. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

extant

adjective
: existing at the present time : not destroyed or lost

More from Merriam-Webster on extant

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