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say it: root
root is a noun and verb meaning "(botany) the usually underground organ that lacks buds or leaves or nodes; absorbs water and mineral salts; usually it anchors the plant to the ground". It carries 15 recorded senses.
(botany) the usually underground organ that lacks buds or leaves or nodes; absorbs water and mineral salts; usually it anchors the plant to the ground
botany
the place where something begins, where it springs into being
“the Italian beginning of the Renaissance”
“Jupiter was the origin of the radiation”
“Pittsburgh is the source of the Ohio River”
“communism's Russian root”
a number that, when multiplied by itself some number of times, equals a given number
someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent)
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for root come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.