Did you know?
Extradite and its related noun extradition are both ultimately Latin in origin: their source is tradition-, tradition, meaning “the act of handing over.” (The word tradition, though centuries older, has the same source; consider tradition as something handed over from one generation to the next.) While extradition and extradite are of 19th century vintage, the U.S. Constitution, written in 1787, addresses the idea in Article IV: “A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.”
Examples of extradite in a Sentence
Robert Salonga, Mercury News, 7 Jan. 2026
Contreras was extradited from Oregon to California and was booked into the Santa Clara County Main Jail.
—Tim Fang, CBS News, 7 Jan. 2026
Venezuelans awoke the next morning to news that the tall, burly man who had ruled the country for nearly 13 years and through fraudulent elections was forcefully extradited by the Americans back to the United States to stand trial.
—Daniel Depetris, Chicago Tribune, 6 Jan. 2026
The arrest comes several weeks after a Massachusetts travel agency owner accused of scamming a Florida high school out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a fake European trip was caught in California and extradited back to the Sunshine State.
—David Matthews, New York Daily News, 6 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for extradite
Cite this Entry
“Extradite.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extradite. Accessed 8 Jan. 2026.
Copy CitationKids Definition
extradite
verb
Legal Definition
extradite
transitive verb
Share