defunct

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin dēfūnctus (“discharged, finished; deceased, dead”),^[2][3][4][5] the past participle of dēfungor (“to discharge, finish, have done with; to die”),^[2][6][7] formed from dē- (“off, completely”) and fungor (“to perform, discharge (a duty)”).^[3][4][5][8] Etymonline and Barnhart allow that it may have come through Old French defunct,^[3][4] and the OED that it may have come through the French form that Cotgrave records in 1611;^[2] the modern French word is défunt.^[3][9] Etymonline glosses the Latin participle literally as "off-duty".^[3] It shares its Latin root with function and perfunctory.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the noun phrase the defunct, the dead person, in 1548, in Hall's chronicle.^[2][11] The adjective, dead or deceased, follows in 1599 in Shakespeare's Henry V,^[4][7] or 1603, in a letter of King James, in the OED's dating.^[2] Etymonline dates the adjective to the 1590s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Ayto explains the sense "dead" as coming from the Latin participle's sense "discharged, finished".^[10] Johnson (1755) gave only "dead; deceased", quoting Shakespeare's Othello and Hudibras.^[12] The figurative sense, no longer in existence or no longer working, is recorded from 1741, in Love of Fame,^[2] and Word Origins and the Shorter Oxford also date the sense "no longer in use or in fashion" to the mid 18th century.^[13][9] This is now the main use: Collins and Merriam-Webster define the adjective as no longer living, existing or valid, of a journal or a theory as well as a person.^[14][7]

Timeline

• 1548 – noun, the defunct, the deceased person.^[2][11]
• 1599 – adjective, dead, deceased, in Shakespeare's Henry V.^[4][7] The OED's first quotation for it is from 1603.^[2]
• 1741 – figurative, no longer in existence or no longer working.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. No longer existing, working or in use: a defunct railway line.^[14][7][2]
2. No longer living; dead, deceased.^[14][7][2]

Noun

1. the defunct: the dead person, the deceased.^[2][7][9]

Word family

• defunctive
• defunctness

Related words

• function
• perfunctory

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins