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Extinction   /ɪkstˈɪŋkʃən/  /ɪkstˈɪŋʃən/   Listen
Extinction

noun
1.
No longer active; extinguished.
2.
No longer in existence.  Synonym: defunctness.
3.
The reduction of the intensity of radiation as a consequence of absorption and radiation.
4.
Complete annihilation.  Synonym: extermination.
5.
A conditioning process in which the reinforcer is removed and a conditioned response becomes independent of the conditioned stimulus.  Synonym: experimental extinction.
6.
The act of extinguishing; causing to stop burning.  Synonyms: extinguishing, quenching.



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"Extinction" Quotes from Famous Books



... mortifications; and it is history that when, in 1731, the last duke of the Farnese family died, leaving a widow, "Frugoni predicted and maintained in twenty-five sonnets that she would yet give an heir to the duke; but in spite of the twenty-five sonnets the affair turned out otherwise, and the extinction of the house of ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... delegates to Washington, and an international conference was held during the months of October and November last, wherein it was unanimously agreed that under the existing regulations this species of useful animals was threatened with extinction, and that an international agreement of all the interested powers was necessary for their ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the powers of a consummate master. A fastidious observer might indeed object to the bold, muscular strength of the old man—as exhibited in his legs and arms—and as indicative of the maturity, rather than of the approaching extinction, of life ... but what sculptor, in the representation of such subjects, can resist the temptation of displaying the biceps and gastrocnemian muscles? The countenances are all exquisite: all full ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... that the wonders here recorded could be possibilities of everyday life. But, if so, as Mr. Weller, Senior, observed, a propos of "there being a Providence in it," "O' course there is, SAMMY; or what 'ud become o' the undertakers?" And as to cremation—well, such an utter corporeal extinction would be the only way of putting an end to the terrestrial existence of Phra the Phoenician, who, however, "might rise," as Mrs. Malaprop would say, "like a Phoenician ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various

... not to any cultivation of the mind. Their health Buffered in a nomadic life from the ills of the country, the dangers of the climate, and the children by whom a few were accompanied, showed a degeneracy of blood which threatened the race with extinction. ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... human, so absorbed in small external matters, so reminiscent now and then of the days of her youth, so utterly without resentment or peevishness. It seemed curiously pathetic to the girl to watch that quiet old spirit approach its extinction, or rather, as Mabel believed, its loss of personality in the reabsorption into the Spirit of Life which informed the world. She found less difficulty in contemplating the end of a vigorous soul, for in that case she imagined a kind of energetic rush of force back ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... for instance: you know physics, something of geology, Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree; Butterflies may dread extinction,—you'll ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... of the causes which led to it. In the first place, history teaches us that whenever civilized man comes in contact with a savage race, the latter almost inevitably begins to decrease, and to approach by more or less gradual steps towards extinction. Whether this catastrophe is the result of political, moral, or physical causes, the ablest writers have not been able to decide; and most men seem willing to content themselves with the belief that the event is in accordance with some ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... rapid using up of nonrenewable mineral resources, the depletion of forest areas and wetlands, the extinction of animal and plant species, and the deterioration in air and water quality (especially in Eastern Europe, the former USSR, and China) pose serious long-term problems that governments and peoples are ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... As to the last view, it is surely but reasonable to suppose, with Quatrefages, that the superior intelligence of man would serve to protect him from the operation of causes that would effect the extinction of lower animals. Hence, unless some evidence be produced to show that species of apes are known to make rude stone implements, or some evidence that they did this in past ages, we must believe, with Geikie and ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... fatigued settings of the worst sort against red velvet of the most depraved shade possible. We are tired of the elaborately costumed person whose charms are trivial and insignificant, we are well tired also of the ordinary gentleman dancer and of the songwriter, we are bored to extinction by the perfectly dull type of playlet which features some well known legitimate star for illegitimate reasons. Our plea is for the re-creation of variety into something more conducive to light pleasure for the eye, something more conducive ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... all. You can't tell what an appalling piece of work there is before us; but I give you my word that if religion were not a vital part of my being, if I did not believe that God is watching every action and leading us in our blind struggles, I should faint at my task; I should long for extinction, though only cowards seek it of ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... seeks the substitution of a better method than war for determining justice between nations. Each nation has its own individual problems to deal with, and in this respect all cannot proceed according to set rules. The movement does not mean the extinction and obliteration of nationality and national rights. The individual has not been minimized because he consents to submit his differences with his fellow men to a court for settlement. And this ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... Indefatigable; and the British Fleet soon formed a single line curving round east and south-eastwards like a net into which the Germans were being drawn. The crisis had arrived, and German naval power seemed on the verge of extinction. But the weather came to assist Von Scheer's tactical skill. He turned with less misfortune than had attended Beatty's similar manoeuvre two hours earlier, and set himself to fight a magnificent ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... bulk of which was left to Amelia Chapley. But she left five thousand to me in trust for Jims. The interest is to be used as I see fit for his education, and the principal is to be paid over to him on his twentieth birthday. Certainly Jims was born lucky. I saved him from slow extinction at the hands of Mrs. Conover—Mary Vance saved him from death by diptheritic croup—his star saved him when he fell off the train. And he tumbled not only into a clump of bracken, but right into this ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... or in marked characters. It long remained the obscure capital of a dynasty which the Guelfs and Habsburgs were pleased to look down upon as parvenu. During the Thirty Years' war, in which Brandenburg played such a pitiable part, Berlin was on the verge of extinction. By 1640 its population had been reduced to 6000. Even the great elector, passing his life in warfare, could do but little for his capital. His successor, Frederick I., the first king of the Prussians, was more fortunate. To him the city is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words-where death was an almost laughable impossibility-the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life." He wrote further: "It is no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder, associated with absolute clearness ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... only why things were good and bad,' was Lance's lucid answer; and he was then intent on detailing the stories he had heard from Fernando. He had been in the worst days of Southern slavery ere its extinction, on the skirts of the deadly warfare with the Red Indians; and the poor lad had really known of horrors that curdled the blood of Wilmet and Geraldine, and made the latter lie awake or dream ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of Art. But the clannishness of sex has its unwritten laws. Boys, as such, are sufficiently put upon, maltreated, trodden under, as it is. Should they fail to hang together in perilous times, what disasters, what ignominies, may not be looked for? Possibly even an extinction of the tribe. I dropped my paint brush and ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... make known "His ways and acts" towards the children of men. He will meet friend and foe, and disclose the real history of each person who ever lived, from the first moment of his birth to the moment of his trial; and of each family, and city, and kingdom, from their rise till their final extinction in the dust; and thus the universe shall know how His government over human affairs, in all ages and climes, has been conducted; and in what manner His authority and power over all things for His Church has been exercised; that it may be known on evidence, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... present we must follow its course from the moment of its apparent extinction in 1786. This course can be traced not only through the "German Union," which is believed to have been a reorganization of the original Illuminati, but through the secret societies of France. Illuminism in reality is less an Order than a principle, and a principle which can work better under cover ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... evils which prevail in our beloved country; the love of rule, civil and ecclesiastical; the miserly love of money, selfishness, vanity and sensualism, in their worst and most degrading forms! Customs and habits prevail which threaten the extinction of at least the Protestant portion of the community in large sections of our country. A Catholic bishop stated, a few years ago, that one quarter of the inhabitants of New England are Catholics, and that one-fourth of the population give birth to 70 per cent. of the children ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... like a study of history, inspires optimism. It is hard to believe that it could have been intended first for perfection and then for extinction. It is equally difficult to believe that any soul will, in the end, be "cast as rubbish ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... worded than the first, was then drawn up, imploring the Consuls to intercede on behalf of the victims of the Concentration Camps and to inform the Powers represented by them, of the death-rate which threatened the Boer nation with extinction. ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... thousand copies which had emigrated to London remained there, little disturbed by public inquiry; and in Scotland, the personal animosity against almost every literary character there, which had inflamed the sale, became naturally the latent cause of its extinction; for its life was but a feverish existence, and its florid complexion carried with it the seeds of its dissolution. Stuart at length quarrelled with his coadjutor, Smellie, for altering his reviews. Smellie's prudential ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... of death, he was poisoned, or strangled, or beaten with clubs, at the command, or in the presence, of the tyrant. The emperor Isaac Angelus soon followed his son to the grave; and Mourzoufle, perhaps, might spare the superfluous crime of hastening the extinction of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... sweet face and a bright one," he said; "a fairer and brighter I never saw. It is strange that I should meet her now only when I am about to die." Then he thought of the agony which his mother would feel at the news of his death and at the extinction of their race. Sadly he paced up and down his narrow cell till night fell. None took the trouble to bring him food—considering, doubtless, that he might well fast till morning. When it became dark he lay down on the hard stone, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... and greatest gift by which God enables us to advance the things of the gospel. It is the last bright flame, manifesting itself just previous to the extinction of the world. Thanks be to God, it came before the last day came."—Michelet's "Life of ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... wounded, or destroying women and children. They listened attentively to his words, and promised obedience; but these commands were so flatly opposed to all their philosophy of war, which required the extinction of every human feeling, that Burgoyne might as well have bidden the waters of the lake flow backward, as expect an Indian not to use his scalping-knife whenever an enemy ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake

... skill and care of men rescue a drowned wretch from extinction, and warm the flickering spirit into steady flame, such pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart—the struggle of life and death ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... agency he directed us to correspond with our friends in Flanders.—Perhaps," said the lady, "it is his politic intention to mew us up here until our lives' end, that he may seize on our estates, after the extinction of the ancient house of Croye. The Duke of Burgundy was not so cruel; he offered my niece a husband, though ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... nations a mode of piracy still tolerated, or which was tolerated in the last war, but is now ripe for extinction. It is that war of private men upon private men, which goes on under the name of privateering. Great changes have taken place in our modes of thinking within the last twenty-five years; and the greatest change of all lies in the thoughtful spirit which we now bring to the investigation of all public ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... oxygen, gossamer, polygynia, and polyandria. That fashion, however, passed rapidly away; and if it be now evident to all the world, that Dr Darwin obstructed the extension of his fame, and hastened the extinction of his brilliant reputation, by the pedantry and ostentatious learning of his poems, Mr Scott should take care that a different sort of pedantry does not produce the same effects. The world will never be long pleased with what it does not readily understand; ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... Life.—Rural districts are always very prolific, and when we hear the wails of writers on "Social Economy," bemoaning the small birth-rates of their large cities, we need have no fear for urban extinction, as emigration from the country by many ambitious sons and daughters, to avail themselves of the superior advantages that the city offers, will not only keep up but to a certain point increase the population, until the reaction of overcrowding, following the self-regulating ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... far back to the time when Dudley Venner was born,—she being then a middle-aged woman. The heir and hope of a family which had been narrowing down as if doomed to extinction, he had been surrounded with every care and trained by the best education he could have in New England. He had left college, and was studying the profession which gentlemen of leisure most affect, when he fell in love with a young girl left in the world almost ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... conqueror, argues some essential defect of system. Under our modern policy, military power—though it may be the growth of one man's life—soon takes root; a succession of campaigns is required for its extirpation; and it revolves backwards to its final extinction through all the stages by which originally it grew. On the Roman system this was mainly impossible from the solitariness of the Roman power; co-rival nations who might balance the victorious party, there were absolutely ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... than their meat." [Footnote: A brood of wild-geese, which long frequented one of the uppermost islands in Loch-Lomond, called Inch-Tavoe, were supposed to have some mysterious connexion with the ancient family of MacFarlane of that ilk, and it is said were never seen after the ruin and extinction of that house. The MacFarlanes had a house and garden upon that same island of Inch-Tavoe. Here James VI. was, on one occasion, regaled by the chieftain. His Majesty had been previously much amused by the geese pursuing each other on the Loch. But, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... we can make of it an orderly and good-tempered affair in which no serious injustice is done to any one, it will, when it comes at last, grow into a conflagration that may destroy much else as well. As regards internal debt, I am one of those who believe that a capital levy for the extinction of debt is an absolute prerequisite of sound finance in everyone of the European belligerent countries. But the continuance on a huge scale of indebtedness between Governments has special dangers ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... as Right Royal crawled out, He said, "That's extinction beyond any doubt." On the plough, on and on, went ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield

... are those who will be glad to know how the lamp, whose light of poetry has beamed on their far-away recognition, was watched over with care and pain, that they may send to her, who is more darkened than they by its extinction, some token of their sympathy. She is destitute and alone. If any, far or near, will send to us what may aid and cheer her through the remainder of her life, we will joyfully place ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... history contained in the books of Kings may be conveniently divided into three periods—(1) the reign of Solomon over all Israel; (2) the history of the coexisting kingdoms of Judah and Israel; (3) the history of the kingdom of Judah after the extinction of the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... may be found that exhibits the condition of life towards which, by elimination of failures, the world has been moving through the allotted space.[50] You will know it by outward signs: Representation, the extinction of slavery, the reign of opinion, and the like; better still by less apparent evidences: the security of the weaker groups[51] and the liberty of conscience, which, effectually ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton

... constructive philology is reefing its sails, when the judicious grieve at the portentous metaphysical shams of yesterday and smile at those of to-day—such a moment is rather ill chosen for prophesying the extinction of a deep-rooted system of religion because your own studies make it seem to you incredible; especially if you hold a theory of knowledge that regards all opinions as arbitrary postulates, which it may become convenient to abandon at ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... obeying that first impulse. Joseph Chestermarke had gone away—probably for the night. And there had been something in the metallic clang of that closing door, something in the sure and certain fashion in which it had closed into its frame, something in the utter silence which had followed the sudden extinction of the light, which made the captive feel that he might beat upon door or wall as hard and as long as he pleased without attracting any attention. This place into which he had come of his own free will was no ordinary place—already he felt that he was in a trap out of which it was not ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher

... to survive his less lucky comrades, and, escaping among the birds who are duly chronicled as "getting away," to perch, full of resentment at the probable extinction of his species, in the fashionable quarter of London. He would there witness a grand act of retaliation. He would learn how Belgravia avenges Hornsey and Shepherd's Bush. He would see the very men from whom his relatives had received their quietus flying to ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... nation, the gods have to adapt themselves to the new taste. As society grows more humane, cruel and sanguinary religious observances, though they may long keep a hold of the ignorant and excitable, lose their support in the public conscience and are sentenced to change or to extinction. And when a new consciousness of personal human dignity springs up, and men come to feel the infinite value and the infinite responsibility of personal life, the old public religion is felt to be cold and distant, and religious services of a more personal and more intimate ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... moreover, of this decline was, in the following century, followed by what practically amounts to extinction; and the few exceptions to which we shall refer, and which are to some extent selected at random, prove the truth of that theory. Thomas Creede, 1588-1618, whose shop was at the sign of the Catherine Wheel, near the Old Swan in Thames Street, ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts

... part of the day in the Archives, and the greater part of my time there in being bored to extinction by the Director thereof, who today spouted Aeneas Sylvius' Commentaries for three-quarters of an hour without taking breath. From this sort of martyrdom (what are the sensations of a former racehorse being driven in a cab? If you can conceive them, they are those ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... the extinction of all the magnificence and intellectual ascendency that at one time centred in the great ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... probable failure to reach New York, its entrapment here, the siege and the inevitable tragedy of its end—starvation, sorties, repulses, hand-to-hand fighting at the outer gates, in the nave, here at the crypt door, perhaps on the stairs and in the vaults below—then defeat and slaughter and extinction—what a ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... reigning family are not properly Grimaldis. The last representative was a daughter, married to the Count of Thorigny in 1715, who, on the extinction of the male line in 1731, assumed the name of Grimaldi, and succeeded to ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... cry, "Order, order," as "Monsieur l'Orateur." A Frenchman from the Province of Quebec seems always to be chosen as Canadian Speaker. In my time he was a M. Ouiment, the TWENTY-FIRST child of the same parents, so French Canadians are apparently not threatened with extinction. I heard in the House of Commons at Ottawa the most curious peroration I have ever listened to. It came from the late Nicholas Flood Davin, a member of Irish extraction who sat for a Far-Western constituency. The House was debating ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... glow to see the room in which a statesman worked out the details of a Bill for the extension of the franchise, or a modification of the duties upon imports and exports, though I respect the growing powers of democracy and the extinction of privilege and monopoly; but these measures are dimmed and tainted with intrigue and manoeuvre and statecraft. I do not deny their importance, their worth, their nobleness. But not by committees and legislation does humanity triumph. In the vanguard go the blessed ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... steps to restore to China other sovereign rights long impaired by the encroachments of foreign powers. A commission is to be appointed to investigate the administration of justice with a view to the ultimate extinction of extraterritorial rights now enjoyed by foreigners. The powers also agreed to abandon not later than January 1, 1923, their existing postal agencies in China, provided an efficient Chinese postal service be maintained. The system of foreign post offices in China has been the subject of great ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane

... earliest fishes, birds, or beasts. They were adapted, as we now find them, to their precise sphere of existence, without progressive aptitude, preparatory to a higher and translated condition of being. Geology rather points to the extinction and degeneracy of species than their improvement; and the fossils of the old red sandstone, and of the carboniferous formation, attest a loftier and more magnificent creation of both marine and land products than any ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... milk safe. On the other hand, it denies that raw milk is necessarily dangerous; that properly modified, clean, raw milk is any safer when pasteurized; that talking about germ-proof milk insures germ extinction. It maintains that pasteurization kills benign germs essential to the life of milk, and that after benign germs are killed, pasteurized milk, if exposed to infection, is more dangerous than raw milk, for the rapid growth ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... content that the democratic nations of our time are destined to witness the extinction of the transcendent luminaries of man's intelligence, nor even that no new lights will ever start into existence. At the age at which the world has now arrived, and amongst so many cultivated nations, perpetually excited by the fever of productive industry, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... With the extinction of these two forms of creative impulse Coleridge's poetic activity, from causes to be considered hereafter, came almost entirely to an end, and into what later forms it might subsequently have ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... contemporaries of Brummell in his zenith, boon companions of George IV. in his regency—still haunted the spot. From four to six in the hot month of June, they sauntered stately to and fro, looking somewhat mournful even then, foreboding the extinction of their race. The Bond Street Lounger was rarely seen alone: he was a social animal, and walked arm in arm with his fellow-man. He did not seem born for the cares of these ruder times; not made was he ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... say it is striking.' And he was drawn into describing the old Italian mansion, purchased on the extinction of an ancient family of nobles, perched up on the side of a mountain, whose feet the sea laved, with a terrace whence there was a splendid view of the Gulf of Genoa, and fine slopes above and below of chestnut-trees ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... as in the former world; he lies down, sleeps, and wakes up, as in the former world; he eats and drinks, as in the former world; he enjoys conjugial delight, as in the former world; in a word, he is a man as to all and every particular; whence it is manifest, that death is not an extinction, but a continuation, of life, and that it is only ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... public hypnotized. He could sell ten copies of a book where a reviewer could sell one. His word on a play was final—or almost. Personal mention of any of the Sophisticates added a cubit to reputation. Three mentions made them household words. Neglect caused agonies and visions of extinction. Disparagement was preferable. By publicity shall ye know them. Even public men with rhinocerene hides had been seen to shiver. Cause women courted him. Prize fighters on the dour morn after a triumphant night had howled ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... and for Charlotte Bronte. From the moment when he seized her and dragged her to the garret he made Lucy live as Charlotte Bronte had never contemplated her living. He made her live to the utter exclusion and extinction ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... remembered the sudden extinction of the lights as he moved down the stairs, the stifling, choking odor below, and the deadly grip of suffocation which had brought him to ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... We look with anxiety for the part played by the serene thinker when the hour had struck for violent and heroic action. Emerson had hitherto been a Free Soiler; he had opposed the extension of slavery; and he favoured its compulsory extinction, with compensation on the plan of our own policy in the West Indies. He had never joined the active Abolitionists, nor did he see 'that there was any particular thing for him to do in it then.' 'Though I sometimes accept a popular call, and preach on Temperance or the Abolition of Slavery, I ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley

... It took him nearly an hour to get through with the Bob-whites and the sandpipers, the wild turkeys, the ducks and the wild geese. And long before that time George was bored to extinction. He had little imagination. To him the Trumpeter was just a stuffed old bird. He could not picture him as blowing his trumpet beside the moon, or wearing a golden crown as in "The Seven Brothers." He had never heard of "The Seven Brothers," and nobody in the world wore crowns except ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... although the law there has many defects, still it is a step in the right direction, and the result has been of almost unmixed good to both sides. One of its minor, yet really great, benefits has been a considerable extinction of the parasite ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

... case of Oenothera muricata x biennis the differentiating units reduce the fertility to a low degree, threatening the offspring with almost complete infertility and extinction. But then we do not know whether these characters are really units, or perhaps only seemingly so and are in reality composed of smaller entities which as yet we are not able to segregate. And as long as we are devoid of empirical means of deciding such questions, it seems useless to go farther ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... they authorised by the nature of poverty? Certainly not, if poverty induced no adventitious evils, involved nothing but a deficiency of the comforts of life, leaving life itself unimpaired. "The life is more than food, and the body than raiment;" and the untimely extinction of the life itself would not be worth the pangs which apprehended poverty excites. But poverty involves woes which, in their sum, are far greater than itself. To a multitude it is the loss of a pursuit which they have ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... more energy to be used in other things; but when the birth rate falls more rapidly than the death rate or falls beyond a certain point, it is evident that the normal growth of a nation is hindered, and even its extinction may be threatened. While an excessively high birth rate is a sign of low culture on the whole, on the other hand an excessively low birth rate is a sign of physical and probably moral degeneracy in the population. ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... this is not man's mood, in his regime Sweet "calm decay" becomes mischance unmeet, And dying creeds sink to extinction, Hooted, and scorned, and sepultured in hate, Denied their rosary of good deeds and boon Of reverence and holy unction— First in the list of crimes man ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... people of the remote future were strict vegetarians, and while I was with them, in spite of some carnal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also. Indeed, I found afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were very delightful; one, in particular, that seemed to be in season all the time I was there—a floury thing in a three-sided husk—was especially good, and I made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... please the fancy of this same grim old monarch. The feathers of which this strange, but really elegant, robe is made are of a reddish color. The birds from which they were plucked were found only in the Hawaiian Islands and each bird had only four feathers, two being under each wing. The extinction of the bird is attributed to the making of this royal robe. So many of them were needed that hundreds of hunters were employed a score or more of years to secure the number required. Placing the wages of the hunters ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley

... Parent-Duchatelet, the greatest authority on French prostitution, stated that "prostitution is for the majority only a transitory stage; it is quitted usually during the first year; very few prostitutes continue until extinction." It is difficult, however, to ascertain precisely of how large a proportion this is true; there are no data which would serve as a basis for exact estimation,[172] and it is impossible to expect that respectable married women would admit that they had ever been "on the streets"; they would ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... explanation,—often leaves untouched the very difficulty he starts,—and when he has poured before us a glimpse of light upon the shapeless form of some dark conception, he seems to take a wilful pleasure in its immediate extinction, and leads "us floundering on, and quite astray," through the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... on the part of the people of the south to suppose that those who desire the extinction of slavery, whether residing in America or England, are actuated by unfriendly feelings toward them personally, or by any hostility to the pecuniary or social interests of their section of country. The most important and influential classes of the ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... life, or more difficult—at least I have found it so—than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly ingrained in the mind, the whole economy of nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... white-linen decency, will furnish any substitute. If one has it, he will retain it, whether he stand on his head or his heels. Nothing is really undignified but affectation or conceit; and for the total extinction and annihilation of every vestige of these, there are few things so effectual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... to exist for us, we could never enter it and turn back to it again—that is, it would be dead and extinct, just as the life when we pass beyond its end point in time. Thus birth and death, appearance and extinction of an event in time, as our life, are the same as the beginning and end point of a thing in space, like a house. But the house appears to us to exist permanently, whether we are in it, within the length between beginning and end point, or not; while the event ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... were fought between Burma and the British during the 19th century (see BURMA: History), which resulted in the gradual extinction of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... of his time—part of the appanage of the kings of France, by whom it was placed under the protection of Arles, which had formerly occupied with regard to it a different position. I know not whether the Arlesians neglected their trust, but the extinction of the sturdy little stronghold is too complete not to have begun long ago. Its memories are buried under its ponderous stones. As we drove away from it in the gloaming my friend and I agreed that the two or three hours we had spent there were among the happiest ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... not merely their slaves. Torture, so far from being peculiarly mediaeval, was copied from pagan Rome and its most rationalist political science; and its application to others besides slaves was really part of the slow mediaeval extinction of slavery. Torture, indeed, is a logical thing common in states innocent of fanaticism, as in the great agnostic empire of China. What was really arresting and remarkable about the Middle Ages, as the Spartan discipline was peculiar to Sparta, or the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... to show, that we have "invited every other Town & District to adopt our Principles". It is this. The Town says If it should be the general Voice of the Province that the Rights as stated do not belong [to] them, trusting however that this cannot be the Case, they shall lament the Extinction of Ardor for civil & religious Liberty; THEREFORE says his Excellency The Town invited them to ADOPT their principles. Could it possibly be supposd that when his Excy had declared to the whole Province that we had invited every other Town and District in the province ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... Moreover, change of color from white to red is characteristic of all variable stars of long period, such as "Mira'' in Cetus. It is also characteristic of stars believed to be in the later stages of evolution, and consequently approaching extinction, like Antares and Betelgeuse, and still more notably certain small stars which "gleam like rubies in the field of the telescope.'' These last appear to be suns in the closing period of existence as self-luminous ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... prince, under whom the tide of Moslem conquest was first effectually stemmed, on his deathbed, in 1065, divided his territories among his five children. Castile was left to his eldest son Sancho, Leon to Alphonso, Galicia to Garcia, Zamora and Toro to his two daughters Urraca and Elvira. The extinction of the western caliphate and the dispersion of the once noble heritage of the Ommayads into numerous petty independent states, had taken place some thirty years previously, so that Castilian and Moslem were once again upon equal terms, the country being almost equally divided between ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... in the course of earthly greatness a day of culminating triumph is often paid for by a morrow of sudden extinction. Let us hope it is so. Yet the dawn of that day of retribution may be a long time breaking above a dark horizon. War is with us now; and, whether this one ends soon or late, war will be with us again. And it is the way of true wisdom for men and States ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... the fresh waters amongst the Sunderbunds is destructive to the vegetation of the latter, which requires salt; and if the Megna continues its slow course westwards, the obliteration of thousands of square miles of a very peculiar flora, and the extinction of many species of plants and animals that exist nowhere else, may ensue. In ordinary cases these plants, etc., would take up their abode on the east coast, as they were driven from the west; but such might not be the case ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... there was no check in the speed, no sign of hesitation. We followed in the track of the sound, and, for the most part, kept in sight of the elusive shadow of the sternmost boat. Often, in a denser belt of fog, the sounds of rowing became muffled almost to extinction; or we seemed to hear them all round and, startled, checked our speed. Dark apparitions of boats would surge up on all sides in a most inexplicable way; to the right; to the left; even coming from behind. They appeared real, unmistakable, and, before we had time ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... induce them to send an urgent recall to Edward in time for the spring sessions, and for this no time must be lost. Ermine remained then alone with Rose, feeling the day strangely long and lonely, and that, perhaps, its flatness might be a preparation for the extinction of all the brightness that had of late come into her life. Colin had said he would trust as she did, but those words had made her aware that she must trust as he did. If he, with his clear sense and kindly insight into Edward's character, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... intermittent light by the use of gas, which leaves little to be desired, and which is still in use at Troon harbour. By a simple mechanical contrivance, the gas jet was suddenly lowered to the point of extinction, and, after a set period, as suddenly raised again. The chief superiority of this form of intermittent light is economy in the consumption of the gas. In the original design, of course, the oil continues uselessly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... rears its embattled head from the summit of a hill that gradually slopes down towards the Vistula, in full view to the south of the plain of Vola, a spot long famous for the election of the kings of Poland. [Footnote: It was from this very assumption by the nation, on the extinction of the male line of the monarchs of the house of Jaghellon, that all their subsequent political calamities may be dated. The last two sovereigns of this race were most justly styled good and great kings—-father and ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... saying, that he does not know but there may be another state of probation and offer of salvation, after death, for all to whom Christ is not personally preached; and that, whilst believing in a future retribution, he says that the everlasting punishment of the wicked may be an extinction of the wicked by annihilation." So that a mere doubt on this subject is considered a sufficient reason, by the most advanced and liberal of the whole Orthodox body at the present day, for refusing ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... swept away, and that He would break every yoke and let His oppressed go free. The whole sum of human sorrow is gathered into one petition, that we may all feel that every item of it is capable of attenuation and extinction; and so our prayer, in the very clause which seems to sound the lowest depth, really rises to the loftiest height, and the words which sound likest a wail over all the misery that is done under the sun, have in them the notes of triumph. 'The sweetest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... nothing too great for its alert observation. One page is occupied in the analysis of some peculiarity in the web of a minute spider, while the next deals with the evidence for the subsidence of a continent and the extinction of a myriad animals. And his sweep of knowledge was so great—botany, geology, zoology, each lending its corroborative aid to the other. How a youth of Darwin's age—he was only twenty-three when in the year 1831 he started round the world on the surveying ship ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... aided by the British Resident. The policy of Lord Hastings, although severely criticised in England, must be pronounced a success in the light of later events. From the suppression of the Pindarees and the extinction of the Peishwa in 1818, down to the days of the great mutiny, no serious attempt was made to overthrow British suzerainty by means of an ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... into effect in its due time. They ought never to forget, that emancipation was included in their original idea of the abolition of the slave trade. Slavery was then as much an evil in their eyes as the trade itself; and so long as the former continues in its present state, the extinction of it ought to be equally an object of their care. All the slaves in our colonies, whether men, women, or children, whether Africans or Creoles, have been unjustly deprived of their rights. There is not a master, who has the least claim to their services in point ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson

... continually reminded how sad my life would be without the society and affection of those we love, and how terribly awful the dispensation of death must be to those who cannot anticipate a future reunion, and regard it as the utter extinction of all human interests and affections. I am solacing myself with Wordsworth. Do you know, I shall become a thorough convert to him. Much of his poetry is delicious, and I perfectly adore his philosophy. To me he seems the purest, the most elevated, and the most Christian of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... as the eaten has not disappeared altogether and become the eater, the ruined organism fights against destruction. What manner of life is this, which may be compared with the life of a night light whose extinction is not accomplished until the last drop of oil has burnt away? How is any creature able to fight against the final tragedy of corruption up to the last moment in which a nucleus of matter remains as the seat of vital energy? The forces of the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... of this nation, conscious of the increasing evils, and appalled at the dangers and tendencies of intemperance, believe it has become their duty, under the providence of God, to unite their efforts for its extinction." ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm

... vain. Also he had a great idea of his rights and what was due to him, which he appeared to consider included, upon what ground I could not in the least understand, the reversal of all the Ragnall properties and wealth. I do not think I need say any more about him, except that he bored me to extinction, especially after his ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... the decrease of learning in Scotland, and the Muses' Welcome. JOHNSON. 'Learning is much decreased in England, in my remembrance.' MONBODDO. 'You, sir, have lived to see its decrease in England, I its extinction in Scotland.' However, I brought him to confess that the High School of Edinburgh did well. JOHNSON. 'Learning has decreased in England, because learning will not do so much for a man as formerly. There are other ways of getting preferment. Few bishops ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... forerunner Francois de Gruyere, his features were of a beautiful regularity and nobility, his manner had that princely pride and simplicity which was the greatest charm of Francois I of France. At the French court, as in all Switzerland, he was renowned as "the handsomest knight of his day." With the extinction of the court at Chambery, where his predecessors had received their education in chivalry and where they had so faithfully and honorably served the dukes of Savoy, the young Michel was sent to the still more brilliant ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... understand. Men have nothing in common with me—there is no point of contact; they have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have no sense. Only the Moral Sense. I will show you what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big as a pin's head. Can you imagine an elephant being interested in him—caring whether he is happy or isn't, or whether he is wealthy or poor, or whether his sweetheart ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... South Seas is all upon one pattern; it is a wide ocean, indeed, but a narrow world: you shall never talk long and not hear the name of Bully Hayes, a naval hero whose exploits and deserved extinction left Europe cold; commerce will be touched on, copra, shell, perhaps cotton or fungus; but in a far-away, dilettante fashion, as by men not deeply interested; through all, the names of schooners and their captains, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... the part taken by the first of them in the controversy was considered of sufficient importance to form matter of commemoration in his monumental inscription. Two opponents so famous, might almost seem to threaten extinction to one, of whom it could only be said, that he had been an obscure country schoolmaster, and whose acquirements, whatever they were, were mainly the result of his own unassisted study. In the joint ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... The greater princes, who remained at home, besides establishing peace in their dominions by giving occupation abroad to the inquietude and martial disposition of their subjects, took the opportunity of annexing to their crown many considerable fiefs, either by purchase, or by the extinction of heirs. The pope frequently turned the zeal of the crusaders from the infidels against his own enemies, whom he represented as equally criminal with the enemies of Christ. The convents and other religious societies bought the ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume



Words linked to "Extinction" :   conditioning, scattering, inaction, natural action, ending, inactivity, extinct, termination, absorption, death, disintegration, conclusion, annihilation, inactiveness, natural process, action, extinguish, activity



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