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
In short, Stifel’s optimism about Tesla’s ability to capitalize on a friendlier regulatory environment in its self-driving and other artificial intelligence applications far outweighs its tepid feelings toward Tesla’s extant EV business.
—Derek Saul, Forbes, 2 Dec. 2024
Bilateral symmetry is the predominant trait of Earth's extant species, which provides a timeline of evolution from more than half a billion years ago to the present day.
—New Atlas, 14 Oct. 2024
While this titan clocks in as the second-longest extant whale on the planet, the longest of them all—the blue whale—can also be spotted by extraordinarily lucky voyagers.
—Jared Ranahan, Forbes, 25 Nov. 2024
Despite the app not extant for accessibility’s sake, McCarthy emphasized accessibility does matter to them.
—Steven Aquino, Forbes, 24 Oct. 2024
See all Example Sentences for extant 
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Derek Saul, Forbes, 2 Dec. 2024
Bilateral symmetry is the predominant trait of Earth's extant species, which provides a timeline of evolution from more than half a billion years ago to the present day.
—New Atlas, 14 Oct. 2024
While this titan clocks in as the second-longest extant whale on the planet, the longest of them all—the blue whale—can also be spotted by extraordinarily lucky voyagers.
—Jared Ranahan, Forbes, 25 Nov. 2024
Despite the app not extant for accessibility’s sake, McCarthy emphasized accessibility does matter to them.
—Steven Aquino, Forbes, 24 Oct. 2024
See all Example Sentences for extant
Dictionary Entries Near extant
Cite this Entry
“Extant.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extant. Accessed 22 Dec. 2024.
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