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
It was produced by Google’s Veo 3, similar to extant bogus news anchor content already proliferating the Internet.
—Michael Ashley, Forbes.com, 30 May 2025
When the Frost used their second-round pick to draft her last June, there was some immediate criticism of her social media history, some of it since deleted but including an extant tweet that appears to endorse a group focused on keeping transgender women out of women’s sports.
—John Shipley, Twin Cities, 23 May 2025
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
See All Example Sentences for extant
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
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Michael Ashley, Forbes.com, 30 May 2025
When the Frost used their second-round pick to draft her last June, there was some immediate criticism of her social media history, some of it since deleted but including an extant tweet that appears to endorse a group focused on keeping transgender women out of women’s sports.
—John Shipley, Twin Cities, 23 May 2025
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
See All Example Sentences for extant
Cite this Entry
“Extant.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extant. Accessed 10 Jun. 2025.
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