1The part of a plant which attaches it to the ground or to a support, typically underground, conveying water and nourishment to the rest of the plant via numerous branches and fibres.

1. 1.1 The persistent underground part of a plant, especially when fleshy and enlarged and used as a vegetable, e.g. a turnip or carrot.
   you should never wash roots before storing

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Outside the cavern I had viewed various edible herbs and plants such as onions and turnips as well as roots and grasses.
   • In this street market, celeriac, parsley root, arugula and frisée were available.
   • Women gathered roots, prairie turnips, bitterroot, and camas bulbs in the early summer.
   • It is basically young ginger roots preserved in syrup, so I tried and reproduce something similar using first-of-the-season young ginger.
   • Add the onions and parsley root and sauté until translucent.
   • In a saucepan, add veal shanks, tongue, leeks, parsnips, celery root, garlic, red wine and veal stock.
   • First, there are the crisp, watery roots, such as carrots, jicama, radishes, and lotus root.
   • Even the accompanying potato and turnip gratin play off tuber and root, the warmth of one, the tang of the other.
   • Reduce the heat, add the carrots, celeriac, leeks, and parsley root and simmer until tender, about three hours.
   • Leafy vegetables, roots, and fruits completed the traditional diet.
   • Add the carrot, celery root, onions, apples, and paprika and sauté until soft.
   • From the mid-16th century suckets were made in Britain from local fruits, vegetables, and roots of many kinds.
   • These include turnips, cabbage, mustard, cassava root, soybeans, peanuts, pine nuts and millet.
   • There actually looked to be enough meat left on the bones of her rabbit to cut up and fry along with some roots she found while hunting to supply a basic breakfast.
   • Parsnips also make a wonderful soup and terrific fritters, and their long, blond roots are irresistible if roasted until the skinny tails scorch to a crisp.
   • A few sweet roots, parsnips, carrots and a stalk of celery will add flavour to the pan juices.
   • In two medium saucepans, sauté the carrots and celery root with two tablespoons of butter separately.
   • Wash the roots and put them in a casserole dish with a lid.
   • Organisers also recognise ginger as ‘a root of empowerment in holistic medicine.’
   • These taste best when eaten raw, with the exception of lotus root, which should be thinly sliced and steamed or stir-fried.
2. 1.2 Any plant grown for its root.
   roots like beet and carrot cannot be transplanted

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Just when we thought you couldn't screw-up chocolate, someone goes and adds things like ginkgo biloba and bilberry root.
   • Sarsaparilla root contains saponins, which reduce microbes and toxins.
   • Both echinacea and goldenseal root have natural antibiotic activity and are extremely safe, when used as indicated on the label.
   • This way, when you buy some valerian root or St. John's wort, you'll know if there are any adverse reactions that you could get by using the herbal medication.
   • Licorice root happens to look just like an old cheroot cigarette.
   • Millie picked up a piece of mandrake root and broke it.
   • Beer made from manioc root is offered, and the family meal is shared.
   • The diet of rural residents is based on the cassava root, which is called mandioca in Portuguese.
   • In three small studies, men taking nettle root reported slightly better urine flow than men who were given a placebo.
3. 1.3 The embedded part of a bodily organ or structure such as a hair, tooth, or nail.
   her hair was fairer at the roots

   Example sentencesExamples

   • He was a middle aged man of Chinese origin, his hair greying at the roots and his body starting the road to terminal shutdown many years from then.
   • Her head turned to the vanity mirror, eyeing the blond roots of her hair that were growing in.
   • Even his hair and teeth clung to their roots, unlike the others who suffered from malnutrition.
   • Start at the crown of your head, then flip your head upside down and lift your hair at the roots with your fingers.
   • Vitamins A, C and E facilitate the normal shedding of dead cells, and most B vitamins feed follicles and hair roots.
   • While electrolysis sounds more threatening, the premise behind this method is that a needle zaps the hair at its root and kills it.
   • He had short hair with brown roots and blonde tips and I'd have noted his eye color but he didn't look at me for very long and I hadn't been close enough to tell.
   • His two-toned blond hair with black roots was falling over his eyes and he tried to blow it upwards and out of his eyes, failing miserably.
   • Severe flaking results from sebaceous glands, which are the glands near the roots of our hair.
   • Waxing, on the other hand, pulls the entire hair out from the root.
   • The scarring types produce scars, which affect the hair root and destroy the papilla or matrix.
   • She had blonde hair from her roots to her shoulders, then the color drastically changed like a person playing two different characters in a play.
   • The root of the hair extends down into the follicle and widens into a bulb at its base, which is the center of hair growth.
   • I'd just sit in the little cuticle and chew my nails down to the roots, not caring if they put me in one of those straitjackets.
   • The shoulders of the young man lurched upwards in an irregular motion and his brows arched to the roots of his hair as he stared at his father.
   • I feel Mother's cold smile, her fingers releasing Nikola and his face relaxing when the roots of his hairs snap back into place in his skin.
   • She could feel the rough fingers gently cupping her neck and touching the roots of her hair.
   • Only later did the penny drop that there weren't enough molars to match the worn milk teeth, and that the roots of the teeth had resorbed to the point that indicated they had been shed naturally.
   • His lofty glance seemed to measure her from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes, leaving the girl stifling with self-consciousness.
   • The brush-on pearlised colors in four shades are best applied on long hair when strands are held together and color stroked on from the root to the tip.
4. 1.4 The part of a thing attaching it to a greater or more fundamental whole; the end or base.
   a little lever near the root of the barrel

   they disappeared from sight behind the root of the crag

   Example sentencesExamples

   • When they experience pain in the middle of the night in bed or while sitting, this is due to interference in circulation to the nerve root and spinal cords where it has been compressed.
   • A little deviation, and you will hit the spinal cord or the nerve root or damage the pedicle that supports the screw.

2The basic cause, source, or origin of something.

1. 2.1roots Family, ethnic, or cultural origins.
   it's always nice to return to my roots

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Many Sansei long to know more about their cultural roots, although the ways of their grandparents are alien to them.
   • Colonization broke the power of the traditional rulers, but social status is still partially determined by a person's family roots.
   • You'll probably need to learn a lot more about each other's religious and ethnic roots, as well as introduce your children to a host of varied rituals.
   • So most nationals prefer not to talk about their cultural roots and very often do not even know their ancestral tree.
   • Many Americans of Bulgarian descent are re-discovering their ethnic roots.
   • Their region had most of the nation's industries, and their French cultural roots were considered an advantage.
   • I want to hold on to my roots, my origins, my family, my friends.
   • After a few aimless years of drifting, he tries to find and establish ethnic roots similar to his own in order to rekindle the principles his father tried to instill in him.
   • Dictators and other political powers often suppress art because it provides a point of critical resistance, building a new national identity by evoking cultural roots.
   • Either he must assimilate in order to succeed or he must forego success for his ethnic roots and familial ties.
   • They and their families have their historical roots in the original villages.
   • With her memory of the past, their aunt serves as the instrument of a gendered return to their ethnic roots carried out in strongly ambivalent terms.
   • Joey had curly brown hair and was as dark as an African American, but his family roots originate from Spain.
   • English cultural roots lie in a merging of Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Norman French culture that has existed as a synthesis since the late Middle Ages.
   • As artists it is important that we be free no matter what our racial and ethnic roots are - to find and define and follow our aesthetic.
   • This was somewhat ironic, as I know for a fact that my family once had its roots in the moors of England as well, and that we were one of the wealthier families and reviled by many.
   • Children living on the street, the lack of family roots, and an increase in crime have brought tremendous social stresses to Latin American countries.
   • It's about my background and about roots, family, music and manhood.
   • People's sense of their cultural roots - a recognition of a place having a strong patina of age and strong local identity - is often instinctive.
   • In the broad Canadian scene, a diverse group of Baptists with different theological or ethnic roots has emerged.

   Synonyms

   origins, beginnings, family, ancestors, predecessors

   heritage

   birthplace, native land, motherland, fatherland, homeland, native country, native soil
2. 2.2as modifier roots Denoting or relating to something from a particular ethnic or cultural origin, especially a non-Western one.
   roots music

   Example sentencesExamples

   • With their previous two albums, they had become the darlings of the roots rock scene.
   • It is not awful, but its steady flow of roots rock near-misses is, at the very least, disheartening.
   • For 10 years running, VP Records annually pumps out compilations that pull from their massive dancehall and roots reggae catalogue.
   • Offered without sound but backed by the movie's manic bump and grind roots rock, they grow dull quickly.
   • Walford Tyson's plaintive, soulful voice floats over deep roots grooves, sweet chord changes and juicy horn stabs; the production is warm, deep and crisp.
   • Their seminal blend of jazz, Afro-Cuban music and roots traditions continues to influence modern West and Central African music.
   • His output was a fusion of everything good in music at the time - chunky punk guitar, killer pop tunes and horns and baselines with a deep ska / roots influence.
   • One song was roots rock, the next featured reggae backbeats.
   • After signing with Zoë, a division of roots label Rounder, they returned re-energized with Open in 2001.
   • Bilyeu, along with his brother and cousins, play in Big Smith, a mountain roots band that bridge the gap between traditional Appalachian gospel and modern country.
   • Paul thought he would give this roots business one more chance.
   • The stage, however, plays host not to righteous roots reggae or foam-mouthed punk rock, but to a scattered group of girls in school uniform.
   • As the show ended and fans filed to the exits only one thing was missing from this roots reverie - just a little more time.
   • It's hard enough for most British bands to capture that roots vibe without sounding phoney or just plain ridiculous, but they pull it off and keep their own unique character too.
   • But that's not the typical response to this countrified roots rock.
3. 2.3 (in biblical use) a scion; a descendant.
   the root of David
4. 2.4Linguistics A morpheme, not necessarily surviving as a word in itself, from which words have been made by the addition of prefixes or suffixes or by other modification.
   many European words stem from this linguistic root

   as modifier the root form of the word

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Significantly, the root of bahelawi is bahel, meaning culture.
   • It's pretty clear, based on Green's paper-doll explanation, that the root morpheme must have been puppet.
   • Words combine with words, or prefixes and suffixes combine with roots, in ways that over time drift away from perfect sense.
   • I do not intend ‘rational’, in this sense, but, rather, in the sense of its Latin root, ratio, meaning reason.
   • So, Eskimoan languages are really extraordinary in their productive word-building capability, for any root you might pick.
5. 2.5Music The fundamental note of a chord.
   in the sequence the roots of the chords drop by fifths

   Example sentencesExamples

   • I have an idea of the flavour now - the root note of the melody, gently picked electric guitar, a line or two of vocals.
   • This is all captured in the toy sax sound that just honks the root note as if someone who can't really play the sax has been given one lesson and one take to give it their best shot.
   • Where there is no figure under a note, the convention is that this denotes the most common chord, which Mr Protheroe describes as a root-position chord; i.e a triad with a root note, the third above and the fifth above.
   • He's just about incompetent whenever he tries anything but the root of the chord, so it's not like we're getting much help from that side, either.
   • Smith's multitracked trumpets mimic the weary blare of the foghorns, often taking their pitches as the root notes for fantastic chords.

3Mathematics
A number or quantity that when multiplied by itself, typically a specified number of times, gives a specified number or quantity.

1. 3.1
   short for square root
2. 3.2 A value of an unknown quantity satisfying a given equation.
   the roots of the equation differ by an integer

4Computing
often as modifier A user account with full and unrestricted access to a system.

5Australian Irish NZ vulgar slang An act of sexual intercourse.

1. 5.1with adjective A sexual partner of a specified ability.

1Cause (a plant or cutting) to grow roots.

1. 1.1no object (of a plant or cutting) establish roots.
   large trees had rooted in the canal bank

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Thicker layers may reduce the amount of oxygen in the soil and encourage plants to root in the mulch layer rather than in the soil.
   • Severe fires incinerate duff and all plants rooted there.
   • Supply high humidity, warmth and light in order for the cuttings to root within four to five weeks.
   • At the time the young plant, having rooted, is placed in a pot, where it will remain for some two to three months.
   • I had a sudden premonition of the proud tower reduced to a pile of rubble overgrown by the plants that had rooted in its mossy crevices.
   • Now is the right time of year to take cuttings of rosemary which roots very easily in sand.
   • The resulting soil is loose and fast draining, which encourages plants to root deeply, well away from the desiccating heat at the surface.
   • Once the stem has rooted it can be cut free of the mother plant.
   • The dome will keep the stems from drying out until the plant is rooted.
   • Dryland corn is rooting at the three foot depth and, even with high temperatures and lack of precipitation, it is looking good.
   • And remember, trees growing in lawns are rooted in the same soil as the grass and rarely require separate nitrogen fertilizer programs.
   • Once the succulents are rooted (in four weeks), he transfers them to pots or garden beds.
   • Cluster-forming bulbous plants, such as daffodils, can be split after they have rooted a few years.
   • Because it is busy rooting, any growth that you may have seen on the bulb will slow down until the plant is rooted - so don't panic of things seem to come to a dead halt.
   • Begin mowing when the lawn is firmly rooted, a month or two after planting.
   • The cuttings root very easily in sand or in a rooting medium.
   • The pool's dark surface is patterned with the reflection of a few bare trees that appear to be rooted within and just beyond the pool itself.
   • The system includes a root-repellent membrane to prevent plants from rooting in the roof, a drainage system and a growing medium that is lighter than the soil used on the ground.
   • Keep moist and a high percentage of the cuttings will root in four to five weeks.
   • These include the ability of mother plants to produce plenty of wood, the ease with which cuttings root, and also the ease with which they can be grafted.

   Synonyms

   take root, grow roots, become established, establish, strike, take

2Establish deeply and firmly.

1. 2.1be rooted in Have as an origin or cause.
   the Latin verb is rooted in an Indo-European word

   Example sentencesExamples

   • With him abstract work came from within, while figurative work and even abstraction from nature were rooted in external stimuli.
   • Their method of art practice was rooted in political protest that rejected the more readily legible and democratic tropes of social realism.
   • Panofsky's contention that Van Eyck literally painted a marriage certificate was rooted in two early accounts of the picture.
   • His humour and his mad, mad giggle were rooted in an irreverence that couldn't let him take anything too seriously - especially himself.
   • His concerns were rooted in society, not theology.
   • Together, they harness decades of experience in a variety of styles to make a musical statement that is rooted in tradition but with no fear of improvisation.
   • No, the whole lack of pre-marriage activity (to be blunt: the total lack of a social life) was what my puzzlement was rooted in.
   • And part of our decision-making about what to publish and what to pursue is rooted in those unanswered questions.
   • The origins of the new disaster were rooted in Menem's years.
   • Many of these clinical problems are already recognized as being rooted in, or exacerbated by, stress; it is Sarno's association of these disease entities with repressed rage that makes his theory unique.
   • This abstract world gains its power from being rooted in very real emotions and anxieties that have haunted cinema since The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, another powerful film about the fragile nature of identity in the face of fantasy.
   • This social gaze is rooted in and reinforces moral assumptions that link being a good mother to caring and being a good father to earning.
   • So when, during a lecture on D.H. Lawrence, Bill mentioned that the writer's sexual problems were rooted in his relationship with his mother, there was dead silence.
   • Those strange new paintings were rooted in the Maori figurative traditions that emerged on the East Coast in the late 19th century.
   • His work was rooted in a landscape, religion and a rural way of life.
   • The origins of convivial practices on the mainland appear to have been rooted in the private sphere of elite social values, which emphasized generosity and hospitality in the framework of direct, reciprocal transactions.
   • Who I am now is rooted in where I began and has been developed by where I have been since, and to ask my fromness is to ask my identity.
   • My beef, as it would be, is rooted in your first two sentences.
   • The ideological context of these exchanges over public policy is rooted in, and sustained by, references to the past.
   • Food and farming, after all, are rooted in living plants and animals.

3often as adjective rooted Cause (someone) to stand immobile through fear or amazement.

4Computing
Gain access to the root account of (a smartphone or computer)

5Australian Irish NZ vulgar slang Have sexual intercourse with.

1. 5.1 Exhaust (someone) or frustrate their efforts.
   grab a pew—you must be rooted

1no object, with adverbial (of an animal) turn up the ground with its snout in search of food.

1. 1.1 Search unsystematically through an untidy mass or area; rummage.
   she was rooting through a pile of papers

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Bounding to the bathroom, he rooted through the cabinets, stuffing everything he found into pockets and hiding places in his sweaters and tunic.
   • He looks over at Tim, who is wearing a pair of headphones over one ear and is rooting around in his jeans pockets for something, probably food.
   • She sighed and started rooting though her rations pack looking for more food.
   • Laura, in her nightgown, notices that Tom's bed is empty while he roots around in his pockets on the fire escape in search of his key.
   • These young designers root through junk piles and garage sales to create one-of-a-kind, quirky pieces of furniture.
   • We had to root around a bit to find food first, but had good luck eventually.
   • The girl rushes to join her mother, who is rooting through some old piles of lace handkerchiefs.
   • He was rooting through his pack for matches when Pierre-Jacques, no doubt assuming he was doing us a favor, soaked the assemblage in gasoline and ignited it with a cigarette lighter.
   • Ignoring his morals and his upbringings, Brad continued to root through the drawer in search of the gun.
   • There was a big pile of stuff in the corner and I rooted through it and felt like a dog searching for a bone or a pig looking for a truffle.
   • The burden would then be on them to root through all their files in search of infringing items.
   • He turned and rooted through a pile of folders on a table beside him.
   • She handed him her brown bag and he rooted through it.
   • With shaking limbs, she rose from her bed, stumbled to the small wardrobe that held her few remaining possessions and started rooting through them, searching frantically.
2. 1.2root something outwith object Find or extract something by rummaging.
   he managed to root out the cleaning kit

   Example sentencesExamples

   • I thought I'd rooted out all the hidden food in our kitchen.
   • The small band of loyal fans like me (I was born the same year as Myra) were reduced to rooting out his records only in 19-cent remainder bins.
   • It is a specialist search tool, specifically refined to root out the bargains you're looking for and leave out the items you're not.

An act of rooting.