extraordinary [LME] This looks as though it is from extra and ordinary, but is actually comes from Latin extra ordinem, meaning ‘outside the normal course of events’. In English extra means ‘beyond, outside’ in many words such as extramarital [E19th] ‘outside marriage’, extracurricular [E20th] ‘outside the curriculum’, and extraterrestrial [M19th]. When it means ‘additional’ or ‘especially’, as in extra-special, it is really a shortened version of extraordinary, which in the 17th and 18th centuries often meant ‘additional, extra’, as in an extract from the diary of the traveller Celia Fiennes, written in 1710: ‘You pay a penny extraordinary for being brought from Tunbridge town.’