Root vs. Trunk — What's the Difference?

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.

The main woody stem of a tree as distinct from its branches and roots.

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

A person's or animal's body apart from the limbs and head.

The basic cause, source, or origin of something

The elongated, prehensile nose of an elephant.

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

A large box with a hinged lid for storing or transporting clothes and other articles.

A user account with full and unrestricted access to a system

The main woody axis of a tree.

An act of sexual intercourse.

(Architecture) The shaft of a column.

An act of rooting

The body of a human or other vertebrate, excluding the head and limbs.

Cause (a plant or cutting) to grow roots

The thorax of an insect.

Establish deeply and firmly

A proboscis, especially the long prehensile proboscis of an elephant.

Cause (someone) to stand immobile through fear or amazement

A main body, apart from tributaries or appendages.

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

The main stem of a blood vessel or nerve apart from the branches.

Have sexual intercourse with.

A trunk line.

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

A chute or conduit.

The usually underground portion of a plant that lacks buds, leaves, or nodes and serves as support, draws minerals and water from the surrounding soil, and sometimes stores food.

A watertight shaft connecting two or more decks.

Any of various other underground plant parts, especially an underground stem such as a rhizome, corm, or tuber.

The housing for the centerboard of a vessel.

The embedded part of an organ or structure such as a hair, tooth, or nerve, that serves as a base or support.

A covering over the hatches of a ship.

The bottom or supporting part of something

An expansion chamber on a tanker.

The essential part or element; the basic core

A cabin on a small boat.

A primary source; an origin.

A covered compartment for luggage and storage, generally at the rear of an automobile.

A progenitor or ancestor from which a person or family is descended.

A large packing case or box that clasps shut, used as luggage or for storage.

Often roots The condition of being settled and of belonging to a particular place or society

Trunks Shorts worn for swimming or other athletics.

Roots The state of having or establishing an indigenous relationship with or a personal affinity for a particular culture, society, or environment

Part of a body.

The element that carries the main component of meaning in a word and provides the basis from which a word is derived by adding affixes or inflectional endings or by phonetic change.

The usually single, more or less upright part of a tree, between the roots and the branches.

Such an element reconstructed for a protolanguage. Also called radical.

The torso.

A number that when multiplied by itself an indicated number of times forms a product equal to a specified number. For example, a fourth root of 4 is √2. Also called nth root.

The conspicuously extended, mobile, nose-like organ of an animal such as a sengi, a tapir or especially an elephant. The trunks of various kinds of animals might be adapted to probing and sniffing, as in the sengis, or be partly prehensile, as in the tapir, or be a versatile prehensile organ for manipulation, feeding, drinking and fighting as in the elephant.

A number that reduces a polynomial equation in one variable to an identity when it is substituted for the variable.

(heading) A container.

A number at which a polynomial has the value zero.

A large suitcase, chest, or similar receptacle for carrying or storing personal possessions, usually with a hinged, often domed lid, and handles at each end, so that generally it takes two persons to carry a full trunk.

The note from which a chord is built.

A box or chest usually covered with leather, metal, or cloth, or sometimes made of leather, hide, or metal, for holding or transporting clothes or other goods.

Such a note occurring as the lowest note of a triad or other chord.

The luggage storage compartment of a sedan/saloon-style car.

To grow roots or a root

(automotive) A storage compartment fitted behind the seat of a motorcycle.

To become firmly established or settled

(heading) A channel for flow of some kind.

To plant and fix the roots of (a plant) in soil or the ground.

A circuit between telephone switchboards or other switching equipment.

To establish or settle firmly

A chute or conduit, or a watertight shaft connecting two or more decks.

To be the source or origin of

A long, large box, pipe, or conductor, made of plank or metal plates, for various uses, as for conveying air to a mine or to a furnace, water to a mill, grain to an elevator, etc.

To dig or pull out by the roots. Often used with up or out

(archaic) A long tube through which pellets of clay, peas, etc., are driven by the force of the breath. A peashooter

To remove or get rid of. Often used with out

(mining) A flume or sluice in which ores are separated from the slimes in which they are contained.

To turn up by digging with the snout or nose

(software engineering) In software projects under source control: the most current source tree, from which the latest unstable builds (so-called "trunk builds") are compiled.

To cause to appear or be known. Used with out

The main line or body of anything.

To turn over the earth with the snout or nose.

(transport) A main line in a river, canal, railroad, or highway system.

To search or rummage for something

(architecture) The part of a pilaster between the base and capital, corresponding to the shaft of a column.

To give audible encouragement or applause to a contestant or team; cheer.

A large pipe forming the piston rod of a steam engine, of sufficient diameter to allow one end of the connecting rod to be attached to the crank, and the other end to pass within the pipe directly to the piston, thus making the engine more compact.

To give moral support to someone; hope for a favorable outcome for someone

(in the plural) swimming trunks

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.

To lop off; to curtail; to truncate.

A root vegetable.

To extract (ores) from the slimes in which they are contained, by means of a trunk.

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

(telecommunication) To provide simultaneous network access to multiple clients by sharing a set of circuits, carriers, channels, or frequencies.

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

The stem, or body, of a tree, apart from its limbs and roots; the main stem, without the branches; stock; stalk.

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

The body of an animal, apart from the head and limbs.

(figurative) The primary source; origin.

The main body of anything; as, the trunk of a vein or of an artery, as distinct from the branches.

(aviation) The section of a wing immediately adjacent to the fuselage.

That part of a pilaster which is between the base and the capital, corresponding to the shaft of a column.

(engineering) The bottom of the thread of a threaded object.

That segment of the body of an insect which is between the head and abdomen, and bears the wings and legs; the thorax; the truncus.

(arithmetic) Of a number or expression, a number which, when raised to a specified power, yields the specified number or expression.

The proboscis of an elephant.

(arithmetic) A square root (understood if no power is specified; in which case, "the root of" is often abbreviated to "root").

A long tube through which pellets of clay, p as, etc., are driven by the force of the breath.

(analysis) A zero (of an equation).

A box or chest usually covered with leather, metal, or cloth, or sometimes made of leather, hide, or metal, for containing clothes or other goods; especially, one used to convey the effects of a traveler.

The single node of a tree that has no parent.

A flume or sluice in which ores are separated from the slimes in which they are contained.

(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.

A large pipe forming the piston rod of a steam engine, of sufficient diameter to allow one end of the connecting rod to be attached to the crank, and the other end to pass within the pipe directly to the piston, thus making the engine more compact.

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

A long, large box, pipe, or conductor, made of plank or metal plates, for various uses, as for conveying air to a mine or to a furnace, water to a mill, grain to an elevator, etc.

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

To lop off; to curtail; to truncate; to maim.

The lowest place, position, or part.

The main stem of a tree; usually covered with bark; the bole is usually the part that is commercially useful for lumber

(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.

Luggage consisting of a large strong case used when traveling or for storage

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

The body excluding the head and neck and limbs;

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

Compartment in an automobile that carries luggage or shopping or tools;

An act of sexual intercourse.

A long flexible snout as of an elephant

A sexual partner.

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

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

To be firmly fixed; to be established.

To get root or privileged access on a computer system or mobile phone, often through bypassing some security mechanism.

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

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

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

(intransitive) Of a baby: to turn the head and open the mouth in search of food.

(transitive) To root out; to abolish.

To sexually penetrate.

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

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

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

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

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

To be firmly fixed; to be established.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 time which to reckon in making calculations.

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.

The lowest place, position, or part.

(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

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

The place where something begins, where it springs into being;

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

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

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

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

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

Take root and begin to grow;

Come into existence, originate;

Plant by the roots

Dig with the snout;

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

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

Cause to take roots