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
There are four versions of Gray’s instrument extant.
—Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, 18 May 2025
The goal should be to complement extant altruism without supplanting it.
—John Werner, Forbes.com, 13 May 2025
Those samples could have told us about possible conditions for ancient, or even extant, life on the once-watery world—potential knowledge that will now be lost.
—Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 6 May 2025
But the elephant bird made even the ostrich – which holds the title as the world’s largest extant bird – look petite.
—Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 11 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for extant
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Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, 18 May 2025
The goal should be to complement extant altruism without supplanting it.
—John Werner, Forbes.com, 13 May 2025
Those samples could have told us about possible conditions for ancient, or even extant, life on the once-watery world—potential knowledge that will now be lost.
—Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 6 May 2025
But the elephant bird made even the ostrich – which holds the title as the world’s largest extant bird – look petite.
—Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 11 May 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 28 May. 2025.
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