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To Extinguish a Response or Make a Response Extinct
If your subject used to engage in some given response, but he no longer does so, then, we say that the response in question has extinguished or that it has become extinct.
For example, if your dog used to greet you at the front door when you came home, but he has since stopped doing so, then, his greeting response is considered to have been extinguished or to have become extinct.
Therefore, when we say that we have extinguished a response, we just mean that, somehow, we have arranged the contingencies in a way that caused the target behavior to stop.