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endling. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
endling, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
endling in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
endling you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
From end + -ling, suggested in a 1996 issue of the magazine Nature.[1]
Pronunciation
Noun
endling (plural endlings)
- (rare) The last individual of its species or subspecies, which therefore becomes extinct upon its death.
2002, SEJ Journal:The last known survivor, the endling of its species, is now stuffed and mounted in a museum in the remote, dusty city of Nukus.
2012 June 27, Helen Lewis, “Sense of an endling”, in New Statesman, archived from the original on 2012-07-11:Endlings are also recorded for the quagga, an equine with zebra-like stripes on its front half, which died in 1883 in a zoo in Amsterdam; a Caspian tiger killed in the 1950s in Uzbekistan; and whichever of a pair of great auks killed in 1844 off the coast of Iceland died second.
2017, B. J. Hollars, Flock Together: A Love Affair with Extinct Birds, page 106:It feels as if I'm the last one left—a human endling—the world turned silent beneath my boots.
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References
- ^ Robert M. Webster, Bruce Erickson (1996 April) “The last word?”, in Nature, volume 380, number 6573, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 386–386: “We therefore propose that ‘endling’ be adopted to designate a person or one of a species that is the last of a lineage in his/her/its line.”
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