endling
English
[edit]
Etymology
[edit]From end + -ling, suggested in a 1996 issue of the magazine Nature.[1]
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]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[2], 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.