We introduce the notion of origin extension which is a formal analogue of Cohen-Macaulay approximation. However, as an approximation, origin extensions are not completely analogous to Cohen-Macaulay approximations. The most remarkably, there exist nonminimal origin extensions that do not include the minimal one as a direct summand. We also discuss when these nontrivially nonminimal origin extensions exist. Our aim is to find a standard method of classifying modules via Cohen-Macaulay approximations. When a moduleMhas positive grade, we show no other module has the same Cohen-Macaulay approximation asM.