uproot
Pronunciation Etymology 1 Verb
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Pronunciation Etymology 1 Verb
uproot (uproots, present participle uprooting; simple past and past participle uprooted)
- (transitive)
- To tear up (a plant, etc.) by the roots, or as if by the roots; to extirpate, to root up.
- Synonyms: deracinate, disroot, grub up, outroot, rout, unroot
- 1839, “Boz” [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], “The Tuggs’s at Ramsgate”, in Sketches by “Boz” Illustrative of Every-day Life, and Every-day People. […], new edition, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC ↗, page 327 ↗:
- [S]he and Mr. Joseph Tuggs, and Miss Charlotta Tuggs, and Mr. Cymon Tuggs, with their eight feet in a corresponding number of yellow shoes, seated themselves on four rush-bottomed chairs, which, being placed in a soft part of the sand, forthwith sunk down some two feet and a half. […] Mr. Cymon, by an exertion of great personal strength, uprooted the chairs, and removed them further back.
- (figuratively) To destroy (something) utterly; to eradicate, exterminate.
- Synonyms: annihilate, obliterate, Thesaurus:destroy
- 1813, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Canto IX”, in Queen Mab; […], London: […] P. B. Shelley, […], →OCLC ↗, page 120 ↗:
- [B]ravely bearing on, thy will / Is destined an eternal war to wage / With tyranny and falshood, and uproot / The germs of misery from the human heart.
- (figuratively) To remove (someone or something) from a familiar circumstance, especially suddenly and unwillingly.
- 1885, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl. and editor, “The Pilgrim Man and the Old Woman”, in A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night […], Shammar edition, volume V, [London]: […] Burton Club […], →OCLC ↗, page 187 ↗:
- [H]ave ye a Sultan who ruleth over you and is tyrannical in his rule and under whose hand you are; one who, if any of you commit an offence, taketh his goods and ruineth him and who, whenas he will, turneth you out of house and home and uprooteth you, stock and branch?
- To tear up (a plant, etc.) by the roots, or as if by the roots; to extirpate, to root up.
- (intransitive, reflexive) Of oneself or someone: to move away from a familiar environment (for example, to live elsewhere).
- Spanish: desraizar (formally)
- German: entwurzeln
uproot (plural uproots)
- The act of uprooting something.
- 2014, Alexander Claver, Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants in Java, page 174:
- With the uproot of the Chinese commercial system in the 1890s such a crisis was bound to surface.
uproot (uproots, present participle uprooting; simple past and past participle uprooted)
- (transitive) Of a pig or other animal: to dig up (something in the ground) using the snout; to rummage for (something) in the ground; to grub up, to root, to rout.
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.001
