Root vs. Rummage

Rootnoun

The part of a plant, generally underground, that anchors and supports the plant body, absorbs and stores water and nutrients, and in some plants is able to perform vegetative reproduction.

‘This tree's roots can go as deep as twenty metres underground.’;

Rummageverb

To arrange (cargo, goods, etc.) in the hold of a ship; to move or rearrange such goods.

Rootnoun

A root vegetable.

Rummageverb

To search a vessel for smuggled goods.

‘After the long voyage, the customs officers rummaged the ship.’;

Rootnoun

The part of a tooth extending into the bone holding the tooth in place.

‘Root damage is a common problem of overbrushing.’;

Rummageverb

(transitive) To search something thoroughly and with disregard for the way in which things were arranged.

‘She rummaged her purse in search of the keys.’; ‘The burglars rummaged the entire house for cash and jewellery.’;

Rootnoun

The part of a hair under the skin that holds the hair in place.

‘The root is the only part of the hair that is alive.’;

Rummageverb

(intransitive) To hastily search for something in a confined space and among many items by carelessly turning things over or pushing things aside.

‘She rummaged in the drawers trying to find the missing sock.’;

Rootnoun

The part of a hair near the skin that has not been dyed, permed, or otherwise treated.

‘He dyed his hair black last month, so the grey roots can be seen.’;

Rummagenoun

A thorough search, usually resulting in disorder.

‘Have a rummage through the attic and see if you can find anything worth selling.’;

Rootnoun

The primary source; origin.

‘The love of money is the root of all evil.’;

Rummagenoun

(obsolete) Commotion; disturbance.

Rootnoun

(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.’;

Rummagenoun

A disorganized collection of miscellaneous objects; a jumble.

Rootnoun

(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.’;

Rummagenoun

(nautical) A place or room for the stowage of cargo in a ship.

Rootnoun

(analysis) A zero (of an equation).

Rummagenoun

(nautical) The act of stowing cargo; the pulling and moving about of packages incident to close stowage.

Rootnoun

The single node of a tree that has no parent.

Rummagenoun

A place or room for the stowage of cargo in a ship; also, the act of stowing cargo; the pulling and moving about of packages incident to close stowage; - formerly written romage.

Rootnoun

(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.

Rummagenoun

A searching carefully by looking into every corner, and by turning things over.

‘He has made such a general rummage and reform in the office of matrimony.’;

Rootnoun

(philology) A word from which another word or words are derived.

Rummageverb

To make room in, as a ship, for the cargo; to move about, as packages, ballast, so as to permit close stowage; to stow closely; to pack; - formerly written roomage, and romage.

‘They might bring away a great deal more than they do, if they would take pain in the romaging.’;

Rootnoun

(music) The fundamental tone of any chord; the tone from whose harmonics, or overtones, a chord is composed.

Rummageverb

To search or examine thoroughly by looking into every corner, and turning over or removing goods or other things; to examine, as a book, carefully, turning over leaf after leaf.

‘He . . . searcheth his pockets, and taketh his keys, and so rummageth all his closets and trunks.’; ‘What schoolboy of us has not rummaged his Greek dictionary in vain for a satisfactory account!’;

Rootnoun

The lowest place, position, or part.

Rummageverb

To search a place narrowly.

‘I have often rummaged for old books in Little Britain and Duck Lane.’; ‘[His house] was haunted with a jolly ghost, that . . .. . . rummaged like a rat.’;

Rootnoun

(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; the person who manages accounts on a UNIX system.

‘I have to log in as root before I do that.’;

Rummagenoun

a jumble of things to be given away

Rootnoun

(computing) The highest directory of a directory structure which may contain both files and subdirectories.

‘I installed the files in the root directory.’;

Rummagenoun

a thorough search for something (often causing disorder or confusion);

‘he gave the attic a good rummage but couldn't find his skis’;

Rootnoun

(slang) A penis, especially the base of a penis.

Rummageverb

search haphazardly;

‘We rummaged through the drawers’;

Rootnoun

An act of sexual intercourse.

‘Fancy a root?’;

Rootnoun

A sexual partner.

Rootverb

To fix the root; to enter the earth, as roots; to take root and begin to grow.

Rootverb

To be firmly fixed; to be established.

Rootverb

To break into a computer system and obtain root access.

‘We rooted his box and planted a virus on it.’;

Rootverb

(ambitransitive) To turn up or dig with the snout.

‘A pig roots the earth for truffles.’;

Rootverb

(by extension) To seek favour or advancement by low arts or grovelling servility; to fawn.

Rootverb

(intransitive) To rummage; to search as if by digging in soil.

‘rooting about in a junk-filled drawer’;

Rootverb

(transitive) To root out; to abolish.

Rootverb

To have sexual intercourse.

Rootverb

To grow roots

‘The cuttings are starting to root.’;

Rootverb

To prepare, oversee, or otherwise cause the rooting of cuttings

‘We rooted some cuttings last summer.’;

Rootverb

To cheer (on); to show support (for) and hope for the success of. See root for.

‘I'm rooting for you, don't let me down!’;

Rootverb

To turn up the earth with the snout, as swine.

Rootverb

Hence, to seek for favor or advancement by low arts or groveling servility; to fawn servilely.

Rootverb

To turn up or to dig out with the snout; as, the swine roots the earth.

Rootverb

To fix the root; to enter the earth, as roots; to take root and begin to grow.

‘In deep grounds the weeds root deeper.’;

Rootverb

To be firmly fixed; to be established.

‘If any irregularity chanced to intervene and to cause misappehensions, he gave them not leave to root and fasten by concealment.’;

Rootverb

To shout for, or otherwise noisly applaud or encourage, a contestant, as in sports; hence, to wish earnestly for the success of some one or the happening of some event, with the superstitious notion that this action may have efficacy; - usually with for; as, the crowd rooted for the home team.

Rootverb

To plant and fix deeply in the earth, or as in the earth; to implant firmly; hence, to make deep or radical; to establish; - used chiefly in the participle; as, rooted trees or forests; rooted dislike.

Rootverb

To tear up by the root; to eradicate; to extirpate; - with up, out, or away.

‘The Lord rooted them out of their land . . . and cast them into another land.’;

Rootnoun

The underground portion of a plant, whether a true root or a tuber, a bulb or rootstock, as in the potato, the onion, or the sweet flag.

Rootnoun

An edible or esculent root, especially of such plants as produce a single root, as the beet, carrot, etc.; as, the root crop.

Rootnoun

That which resembles a root in position or function, esp. as a source of nourishment or support; that from which anything proceeds as if by growth or development; as, the root of a tooth, a nail, a cancer, and the like.

‘They were the roots out of which sprang two distinct people.’;

Rootnoun

A primitive form of speech; one of the earliest terms employed in language; a word from which other words are formed; a radix, or radical.

‘The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.’;

Rootnoun

The time which to reckon in making calculations.

‘When a root is of a birth yknowe [known].’;

Rootnoun

That factor of a quantity which when multiplied into itself will produce that quantity; thus, 3 is a root of 9, because 3 multiplied into itself produces 9; 3 is the cube root of 27.

Rootnoun

The lowest place, position, or part.

Rootnoun

(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

Rootnoun

(linguistics) the form of a word after all affixes are removed;

‘thematic vowels are part of the stem’;

Rootnoun

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’;

Rootnoun

a number that when multiplied by itself some number of times equals a given number

Rootnoun

the set of values that give a true statement when substituted into an equation

Rootnoun

someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent)

Rootnoun

a simple form inferred as the common basis from which related words in several languages can be derived by linguistic processes

Rootnoun

the part of a tooth that is embedded in the jaw and serves as support

Rootverb

take root and begin to grow;

‘this plant roots quickly’;

Rootverb

come into existence, originate;

‘The problem roots in her depression’;

Rootverb

plant by the roots

Rootverb

dig with the snout;

‘the pig was rooting for truffles’;

Rootverb

take sides with; align oneself with; show strong sympathy for;

‘We all rooted for the home team’; ‘I'm pulling for the underdog’; ‘Are you siding with the defender of the title?’;

Rootverb

become settled or established and stable in one's residence or life style;

‘He finally settled down’;

Rootverb

cause to take roots

Rootnoun

the 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

‘root growth’; ‘cacti have deep and spreading roots’; ‘a tree root’;

Rootnoun

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’;

Rootnoun

any plant grown for its root

‘roots like beet and carrot cannot be transplanted’;

Rootnoun

the embedded part of a bodily organ or structure such as a hair, tooth, or nail

‘her hair was fairer at the roots’;

Rootnoun

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’;

Rootnoun

the basic cause, source, or origin of something

‘money is the root of all evil’; ‘jealousy was at the root of it’; ‘the root cause of the problem’;

Rootnoun

family, ethnic, or cultural origins

‘it's always nice to return to my roots’;

Rootnoun

denoting or relating to something from a particular ethnic or cultural origin, especially a non-Western one

‘roots music’;

Rootnoun

(in biblical use) a scion; a descendant

‘the root of David’;

Rootnoun

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’; ‘the root form of the word’;

Rootnoun

the fundamental note of a chord

‘in the sequence the roots of the chords drop by fifths’;

Rootnoun

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

Rootnoun

short for square root

Rootnoun

a value of an unknown quantity satisfying a given equation

‘the roots of the equation differ by an integer’;

Rootnoun

a user account with full and unrestricted access to a system

‘I need to log in as root on my system to resolve an issue’; ‘make sure that these files can only be accessed by the root user’;

Rootnoun

an act of sexual intercourse.

Rootnoun

a sexual partner of a specified ability.

Rootnoun

an act of rooting

‘I had a root through the open drawers’;

Rootverb

cause (a plant or cutting) to grow roots

‘root your own cuttings from stock plants’;

Rootverb

(of a plant or cutting) establish roots

‘large trees had rooted in the canal bank’;

Rootverb

establish deeply and firmly

‘vegetarianism is rooted in Indian culture’;

Rootverb

have as an origin or cause

‘the Latin verb is rooted in an Indo-European word’;

Rootverb

cause (someone) to stand immobile through fear or amazement

‘she found herself rooted to the spot in disbelief’;

Rootverb

gain access to the root account of (a smartphone or computer)

‘we explained how to manually root almost any Android device’;

Rootverb

have sexual intercourse with.

Rootverb

exhaust (someone) or frustrate their efforts

‘grab a pew—you must be rooted’;

Rootverb

(of an animal) turn up the ground with its snout in search of food

‘stray dogs rooting around for bones and scraps’;

Rootverb

search unsystematically through an untidy mass or area; rummage

‘she was rooting through a pile of papers’;

Rootverb

find or extract something by rummaging

‘he managed to root out the cleaning kit’;

Root

In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They most often lie below the surface of the soil, but roots can also be aerial or aerating, that is, growing up above the ground or especially above water.