extroverted

1. 1
   adjectivecolloquial

   Outgoing and sociable, enjoying the company of other people and feeling energized by social situations.

   He was extroverted enough to introduce himself to every guest in the room.

   Extroverted employees often thrive in roles that demand constant interaction.

   Similaroutgoing, sociable, gregarious, convivial

   Oppositeintroverted, shy, reserved, withdrawn

   Note

   A term from psychology that turned into everyday description. Phyllis Blanchard's 1918 Psycho-Analytic Study of August Comte popularized extrovert as a psychological label, and the adjective now turns up casually in talk about people. It pairs naturally with its opposite, introverted, as in "both introverted and extroverted environments." As that phrase shows, it can describe settings and situations as well as individual personalities.

2. 2
   Sayek-stroh-VUR-tidUS/ɛkstɹoʊˈvəɹtɪd/UK/ɛkstɹəʊˈvəːtɪd/

   adjective

   Turned or pushed outward, away from a central point or surface.

   The dried petals looked extroverted, each one curling away from the stem.

   Under pressure the soft rim became extroverted, flaring out from the core.

   Similarflared

   Note

   The literal, physical sense is far older than the psychology. John Webster's Metallographa (1671) speaks of sulphur that is "protruded and extroverted," pairing the word with a near-synonym for pushing out. Read it here as a matter of shape and direction, with no hint of temperament. That meaning arrived only centuries later with the personality sense.

3. 3
   Sayek-stroh-VUR-tidUS/ɛkstɹoʊˈvəɹtɪd/UK/ɛkstɹəʊˈvəːtɪd/

   adjective

   Turned so that the inner surface faces outward; inside-out.

   The surgeon found the membrane extroverted, its inner layer fully exposed.

   An extroverted segment of bowel required careful repair before closing.

   Note

   Clinicians use it of hollow organs. An extroverted bladder is one turned so that its inner lining faces out. What separates it from the general "thrust outward" sense is completeness: the structure is reversed, not merely pushed outward. That is why inside-out is an exact substitute. Outside a medical setting, most readers will hear personality, so name the organ to keep the meaning clear.

4. 4
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of extrovert.

   Note

   Behind this form stands a transitive verb: to extrovert something is to turn or thrust it outwards. So the participle needs an object in the active (the pressure had extroverted the rim) and allows a passive (the rim was extroverted). The same spelling also serves the adjectives, and every form has an older twin spelled with an a, extraverted, of which this is a variant.

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