Extinguished

How to spell extinguished

12 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce extinguished

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does extinguished mean?

1. verbPast tense of extinguish: caused a fire or light to stop burning, or brought something such as a debt or feeling to an end.

Extinguished in a sentence

• The firefighters extinguished the blaze before it reached the warehouse.

• She extinguished the candles one by one before leaving the room.

Where does extinguished come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb exstinguere, formed from the prefix ex-, meaning 'out' or 'completely', joined to stinguere, meaning 'to quench' or 'to put out'. In Latin it described the act of putting out a fire or, more figuratively, snuffing out a life or a feeling. English adopted the base verb 'extinguish' in the sixteenth century, modelling its ending on other verbs of the time, and 'extinguished' is its regular past form. The letter cluster 'gu' is what survives of the Latin stinguere, and it is exactly that silent 'u' tucked after the 'g' that trips writers up, just as it does in 'guard' and 'guilt'. The same Latin root also gives us 'distinguish' and 'instinct', so the puzzling 'guish' spelling is a family trait rather than a one-off oddity.

How the word is built

• ex- (out, completely)
• sting/-guish (from Latin stinguere: to quench, put out)
• -ed (past tense suffix)