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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
Mason Leath, ABC News, 13 Oct. 2025
Prosecutors filed the case in July and she was extradited to the Bay Area soon after, court records show.
—Nate Gartrell, Mercury News, 10 Oct. 2025
At the time of writing that initial article, Conway had already been in custody for a month, and he was eventually extradited to Belgium a month later.
—Matt Slater, New York Times, 7 Oct. 2025
In 2019, the Communist Party on the Chinese mainland started changing the rules, first with a law (introduced through its proxies in Hong Kong) to allow Hong Kong citizens to be extradited back to the mainland for trial under its authoritarian system.
—Peter Leyden, Big Think, 7 Oct. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Extradite.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extradite. Accessed 17 Oct. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
extradite
verb
Legal Definition
extradite
transitive verb
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