■ adjective
1》 relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something.
↘innovative or progressive.
2》 (of surgery) thorough and intended to be completely curative.
3》 advocating thorough political or social reform; politically extreme.
↘ Brit. historical belonging to an extreme section of the Liberal party in the 19th century.
4》 Mathematics of the root of a number or quantity.
5》 denoting or relating to the roots of a word.
6》 Music belonging to the root of a chord.
7》 Botany of or coming from the root or stem base of a plant.
8》 N. Amer. informal excellent.
■ noun
1》 an advocate of ~ political or social reform.
2》 Chemistry a group of atoms behaving as a unit in a number of compounds. See also free ~ .
3》 the root or base form of a word.
↘any of the basic set of Chinese characters constituting semantically or functionally significant elements in the composition of other characters.
4》 Mathematics a quantity forming or expressed as the root of another.
Derivatives
~ism noun
~ization or ~isation noun
~ize or ~ise verb
~ly adverb
~ness noun
Origin
ME: from late L. ~is , from L. radix , radic- 'root'.