extra
Definitions
Commerce
- adjective which is added or which is more than usual
Construction
- A work item performed in addition to the scope specified in the contract. Often involves an additional cost.
Cricket
- adjective used in combination to indicate a supplementary fielding position situated fairly close, typically along an anti-clockwise arc, to one of the established fielding positionsCitation ‘Long-off was moved to long-on, and extra cover to extra long-on — that is, about half-way between long-on and where square leg would be’ (Ranjitsinhji 1897)
- noun Same as extra coverCitation ‘Cowdrey set the partnership on its way with a four to extra’ (Peebles 1959)Citation ‘Atherton was out … driving on the up to short extra where the substitute Cullinan proved himself an equal of any of his colleagues in the field’ (Richard Hutton, Cricketer September 1994)
- noun a run credited to extras
Information & Library Science
- prefix (written as extra-)indicating that something is from outside
Media Studies
- noun a special issue of a newspaper or magazine, often reporting more recent developments in the news or concentrating on a particular subject
- noun a person who is temporarily employed in a minor, usually non-speaking part in a film, e.g. in a crowd scene.
Slang
- adjective intrusive, nosy. In this sense the word was recorded in West London in 1998. Contemporary synonyms were eggs-up and inna.
Origin & History of “extra”
In its modern English use, ‘beyond what is normal’ or ‘additional’, extra is probably an abbreviation of extraordinary (15th c.), in which the prefix represents Latin extrā ‘outside, beyond’. this in turn was short for exterā, the ablative feminine case of the adjective exterus ‘outer’ (from which English gets exterior (16th c.)). And exterus itself began life as a compound form based on Latin ex ‘out’.
