1
a
: currently or actually existing
the most charming writer extant—
G. W. Johnson
G. 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
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
This is where one of the biggest challenges lay, extant garments are nonexistent and there are not a lot of surviving images from ancient times which show what people were wearing.
—Rachel Elspeth Gross, Forbes.com, 5 Apr. 2025
Read More: The Permian Extinction: Life on Earth Nearly Disappeared During the ‘Great Dying’
Success in Warm Waters
Applying evidence from experiments on extant marine animals, the team populated their model with the modern relatives of the creatures of the end-Permian era.
—Sam Walters, Discover Magazine, 27 Mar. 2025
Adorned with vibrant green plumage tinged with bright streaks of blue, this native animal serves as the sole extant parrot species in all of Puerto Rico—yet just a few decades ago, these striking birds lingered at the very edge of extinction.
—Jared Ranahan, Forbes, 25 Mar. 2025
And the Cambrian explosion is an incredible period where animals, which had already been around for probably 100 million years or more, just start to figure out all of these innovations which are hallmarks of extant animals.
—Steven Strogatz, Quanta Magazine, 20 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for extant
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
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Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
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Rachel Elspeth Gross, Forbes.com, 5 Apr. 2025
Read More: The Permian Extinction: Life on Earth Nearly Disappeared During the ‘Great Dying’
Success in Warm Waters
Applying evidence from experiments on extant marine animals, the team populated their model with the modern relatives of the creatures of the end-Permian era.
—Sam Walters, Discover Magazine, 27 Mar. 2025
Adorned with vibrant green plumage tinged with bright streaks of blue, this native animal serves as the sole extant parrot species in all of Puerto Rico—yet just a few decades ago, these striking birds lingered at the very edge of extinction.
—Jared Ranahan, Forbes, 25 Mar. 2025
And the Cambrian explosion is an incredible period where animals, which had already been around for probably 100 million years or more, just start to figure out all of these innovations which are hallmarks of extant animals.
—Steven Strogatz, Quanta Magazine, 20 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for extant
Cite this Entry
“Extant.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extant. Accessed 15 Apr. 2025.
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