radical — meaning in English
French → English · translate English → French instead
English meaning
- radical adjective Favoring extreme, fundamental change, especially in politics or society.
- root noun The underground part of a plant that anchors it and draws in water and nutrients.
- stem noun The main stalk of a plant that supports leaves, flowers, or fruit.
- sweeping adj Wide-ranging and affecting many things at once.
Senses
radical is used for these senses in English:
- radical (historical, early 20th-century France) A member of an influential, centrist political party favouring moderate social reform, a republican constitution, and secular politics.
- radical (linguistics) In logographic writing systems such as the Chinese writing system, the portion of a character (if any) that provides an indication of its meaning, as opposed to phonetic.
- root (linguistic morphology) The primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Inflectional stems often derive from roots.
- stem A slender supporting member of an individual part of a plant such as a flower or a leaf; also, by analogy, the shaft of a feather.
- sweeping Wide, broad, affecting or touching upon many things.
radical — full definition
- adjective Favoring extreme, fundamental change, especially in politics or society.
- adjective Thorough and far-reaching; affecting the most basic or essential part of something.
- noun A person who holds extreme or fundamentally reforming political views.
- noun In chemistry, a group of atoms that behaves as a single unit in reactions (often short for "free radical").
root — full definition
- noun The underground part of a plant that anchors it and draws in water and nutrients.
- noun The origin, source, or underlying cause of something.
- noun In mathematics, a value which, raised to a given power, produces a specified number (most commonly the square root).
- verb To become firmly fixed or established.
- verb To cheer for or support someone, hoping for their success. (usually "root for")