Extraordinary | Definition of extraordinary by Merriam-Webster

Full Definition of EXTRAORDINARY

1

a : going beyond what is usual, regular, or customary <extraordinary powers>

b : exceptional to a very marked extent <extraordinary beauty>

c of a financial transaction : nonrecurring

2

: employed for or sent on a special function or service <an ambassador extraordinary>

— ex·traor·di·nari·ly \ik-ˌstrȯr-də-ˈner-ə-lē, ˌek-strə-ˌȯr-\ adverb

— ex·traor·di·nari·ness \ik-ˈstrȯr-də-ˌner-ē-nəs, ˌek-strə-ˈȯr-\ noun

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Examples of EXTRAORDINARY

A polymer based on the elastic protein that enables fleas to perform their extraordinary jumping feats has been synthesized. The material … is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rubbery and highly resilient; indeed, some of its properties exceed those of a material used to make bouncy balls for the playground. —Rosamund Daw, Nature, 13 Oct. 2005
Jimi Hendrix is one of those extraordinary hubs of music where everybody lands at some point. Every musician passes through Hendrix International Airport eventually. … He is the common denominator of every style of contemporary music. —John Mayer, Rolling Stone, 15 Apr. 2004
Like the eighteenth-century Scots, whose similar borderland situation stimulated an extraordinary renaissance in letters, natural science, and social science, the Americans' ambivalent identities led them to the interstices of metropolitan thought where were found new views and new approaches to the old. —Bernard Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew, 2003
Books can even have merits that are owed to their lack of literary quality: Agatha Christie's whodunits display an extraordinary ingenuity in their plotting, but the beauty of the puzzle requires cardboard characters and total implausibility in motives and reasons. —Richard Jenkyns, New Republic, 28 Jan. 2002
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Origin of EXTRAORDINARY

Middle English extraordinarie, from Latin extraordinarius, from extra ordinem out of course, from extra + ordinem, accusative of ordin-, ordo order

First Known Use: 15th century