extraordinary
adjective
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What is the difference between extraordinary and extra ordinary?
Prefixes can be tricky things, often carrying meanings that differ from what one might expect. Additionally, some prefixes are spelled like independent English words, yet may have meanings that are different from those words. Such is the case with the word extra and the prefix extra-.
The word extra is used as a noun, adjective, and an adverb. When used as a separate word, as in the sentence “It was an extra ordinary day,” “extra” is functioning as an adverb meaning “very.” An “extra ordinary day” is a day that is very ordinary. In contrast, the prefix extra- means “outside or beyond.” Attached to “ordinary,” in “It was an extraordinary day,” the meaning changes markedly, to “It was a day beyond ordinary.”
Examples of extraordinary in a Sentence
Rosamund Daw, Nature, 13 Oct. 2005
Jimi Hendrix is one of those extraordinary hubs of music where everybody lands at some point. Every musician passes through Hendrix International Airport eventually. … He is the common denominator of every style of contemporary music.
—John Mayer, Rolling Stone, 15 Apr. 2004
Like the eighteenth-century Scots, whose similar borderland situation stimulated an extraordinary renaissance in letters, natural science, and social science, the Americans' ambivalent identities led them to the interstices of metropolitan thought where were found new views and new approaches to the old.
—Bernard Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew, 2003
Books can even have merits that are owed to their lack of literary quality: Agatha Christie's whodunits display an extraordinary ingenuity in their plotting, but the beauty of the puzzle requires cardboard characters and total implausibility in motives and reasons.
—Richard Jenkyns, New Republic, 28 Jan. 2002
The researchers made an extraordinary discovery.
The race is an extraordinary event.
Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 29 Oct. 2025
The extraordinary lengths to which the Administration has gone to punish educational institutions for adopting such programs are familiar by now.
—Eyal Press, New Yorker, 29 Oct. 2025
Interestingly, one of the coins features the image of a bishop — which officials highlighted as one of the most extraordinary pieces.
—Andrea Margolis, FOXNews.com, 29 Oct. 2025
Set in the world of women’s basketball, the film follows two phenoms who forge an extraordinary bond as teammates until fame, competition and the ruthless business of college athletics threaten to turn their friendship into an epic rivalry.
—Justin Kroll, Deadline, 29 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for extraordinary
Cite this Entry
“Extraordinary.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extraordinary. Accessed 31 Oct. 2025.
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extraordinary
adjective
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extraordinary
adjective
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