different between frail vs extinct

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Old French fraile, from Latin fragilis. Cognate to fraction, fracture, and doublet of fragile.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /f?e?l/
• Rhymes: -e?l

Adjective

frail (comparative frailer, superlative frailest)

1. Easily broken physically; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish
   • 1831, John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography: Volume 1, Blue-grey Fly-catcher

     Its nest is composed of the frailest materials, and is light and small in proportion to the size of the bird

2. Weak; infirm.
   • 1922, Isaac Rosenberg, Dawn

     O as the soft and frail lights break upon your eyelids

3. Mentally fragile.
4. Liable to fall from virtue or be led into sin; not strong against temptation; weak in resolution; unchaste.

Derived terms

• frailly
• frailness

Related terms

Translations

Noun

frail (plural frails)

1. A basket made of rushes, used chiefly to hold figs and raisins.
2. The quantity of fruit or other items contained in a frail.
3. A rush for weaving baskets.
4. (dated, slang) A girl.
   • 1931, Cab Calloway / Irving Mills, ‘Minnie the Moocher’:

     She was the roughest, toughest frail, but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.

   • 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin 2011, p. 148:

     ‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail.’

   • 1941, Preston Sturges, Sullivan's Travels, published in Five Screenplays, ?ISBN, page 77:

     Sullivan, the girl and the butler get to the ground. The girl wears a turtle-neck sweater, a cap slightly sideways, a torn coat, turned-up pants and sneakers.

     SULLIVAN Why don't you go back with the car... You look about as much like a boy as Mae West.

     THE GIRL All right, they'll think I'm your frail.

Verb

frail (third-person singular simple present frails, present participle frailing, simple past and past participle frailed)

1. To play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.

References

• frail in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Anagrams

• filar, flair

English

Etymology

Recorded since 1432; borrowed from Latin extinctus, the past participle of extinguere (“to put out, destroy, abolish, extinguish”), corresponding to ex- + stinguere (“to quench”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?k?st??kt/, /?k?st??kt/
• Rhymes: -??kt

Adjective

extinct (not comparable)

1. (dated) Extinguished, no longer alight (of fire, candles etc.)

   Poor Edward's cigarillo was already extinct.

2. No longer used; obsolete, discontinued.

   The title became extinct when the last baron died.

   Luckily, such ideas about race are extinct in current sociological theory.

   • Indeed the very fact that the English spelling system writes in there as two words but therein as one word might be taken as suggesting that only the former is a productive syntactic construction in Modern English, the latter being a now extinct construction which has left behind a few fossil remnants in the form of compound words such as thereby.

3. (of a group of organisms, as a species) No longer in existence; having died out.

4. (geology) No longer active.

Synonyms

• (no longer used): See also Thesaurus:obsolete
• (having died out): See also Thesaurus:inexistent
• (volcanology: no longer erupting): dead

Antonyms

• (no longer alight): burning
• (having died out): extant; See also Thesaurus:existent
• (volcanology: no longer erupting): active, dormant

Related terms

• extinction
• extinctive
• extinguish
• distinct

Translations

Further reading

• extinct at OneLook Dictionary Search
• extinct in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• extinct in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Verb

extinct (third-person singular simple present extincts, present participle extincting, simple past and past participle extincted)

1. (transitive, nonstandard) To make extinct; to extinguish or annihilate.