root


   

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root

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Contents

[ English

[ Pronunciation

[ Homophones

  • route (Commonwealth English)

[ Etymology 1

From Middle English root, ‘the underground part of a plant’, from late Old English rōt, from Old Norse rōt, from Proto-Germanic *wrot, from Proto-Indo-European *wrd-, ‘root’; cognate with wort and radix.

[ Noun

Singular
root

Plural
roots

root (plural roots)

  1. The primary source.
    The love of money is the root of all evil.
  2. The part of a plant, generally underground, that absorbs water and nutrients.
  3. The part of a tooth extending into the bone holding the tooth in place.
  4. The part of a hair under the skin that holds the hair in place.
  5. (arithmetic) Of a number or expression, a number which, when raised to a specified power, yields the specified number or expression.
    The cube root of 27 is 3.
  6. (arithmetic) A square root (understood if no power is specified; in which case, “the root of” is often abbreviated to “root”).
    Multiply by root 2.
  7. (analysis) A zero (of a function).
  8. (graph theory, computing) The single node of a tree that has no parent.
  9. (linguistics) The primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents.
  10. (philology) A word from which another word or words are derived.
  11. (computing) In UNIX terminology, the first user account with complete access to the operating system and its configuration, found at the root of the directory structure.
  12. (computing) The person who manages accounts on a UNIX system.
  13. (computing) The highest directory of a directory structure which may contain both files and subdirectories. In PC-based systems the number of entries in a root directory may be limited whereas thee number entries in subdirectories is unlimited.

[ Synonyms

[ Derived terms

[ Translations
of a plant
of a tooth
of a hair
source