roots
noun
Form of root , plural of root.
Simple meaning
Grown-out hair, often of a grey or natural colour.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
rootsIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɹuts
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Ancestry.
of hair
Grown-out hair, often of a grey or natural colour.
Beginnings; origin.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (of hair) Grown-out hair, often of a grey or natural colour.
Used this way, roots is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use roots
- “His roots in Texas go back a long way.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The usually underground organ that lacks buds or leaves or nodes.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
An enthusiastic devotee of sports.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The essential foundation or source.
Either of two roots of the spinal nerves.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
The process of putting forth roots and beginning to grow.
A plant that climbs by its adventitious roots e.g. ivy.
Crop grown for its enlarged roots: e.g. beets.
Pull up by or as if by the roots.
A developed system of roots.
Any of various fleshy edible underground roots or tubers.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.