extinctionist

English

Etymology

From extinction +‎ -ist.

Pronunciation

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Noun

extinctionist (plural extinctionists)

1. An advocate of extinctionism.
   • 2022, Dean Rickles, Life Is Short: An Appropriately Brief Guide to Making It More Meaningful, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 17:

     The Voluntary Human Extinctionists among you would no doubt be thrilled. But how would that affect the remainder of your life? Knowing that yours is the last “batch” of humans, would your actions, your striving, still even make sense?

2. (video games) A player who plays a roguelike game with the additional challenge of killing all creatures to extinction.
   • 2020, John Harris, Exploring Roguelike Games‎^[1], CRC Press, →ISBN:

     What an Extinctionist tries to do is completely eliminate as many kinds of monsters from the game as possible, either through genocide if it's available, or from just depleting all the kinds of monsters that can be produced.

Adjective

extinctionist (comparative more extinctionist, superlative most extinctionist)

1. Relating to extinctionism.
   • 2011 February 20, Harriet Sherwood, quoting Ian McEwan, “Ian McEwan attacks 'great injustice' in Israel”, in The Guardian‎^[2], →ISSN:

     Hamas has embraced the nihilism of the suicide bomber, of rockets fired blindly into towns, and the nihilism of the extinctionist policy towards Israel.

   • 2019 March 23, Sarah Ditum, “Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff review – post-apocalyptic road trip”, in The Guardian‎^[3], →ISSN:

     Although Last Ones Left Alive courts comparison with Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven, it doesn’t deliver that novel’s transcendent sense of art’s absurd persistence. It lacks the extinctionist glee of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy.

   • 2023 July 22, Andrew Anthony, quoting Émile Torres, “‘What if everybody decided not to have children?’ The philosopher questioning humanity’s future”, in The Observer‎^[4], →ISSN:

     “The pro-extinctionist view,” they say, “immediately conjures up for a lot of people the image of a homicidal, ghoulish, sadistic maniac, but actually most pro-extinctionists would say that most ways of going extinct would be absolutely unacceptable. But what if everybody decided not to have children? I don’t see anything wrong with that.”