adj.
        - relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something. 
▸innovative or progressive.
 - (of surgery) thorough and intended to be completely curative.
 - advocating thorough political or social reform; politically extreme. 
▸Brit. historical belonging to an extreme section of the Liberal party in the 19th century.
 - Mathematics  of the root of a number or quantity.
 - denoting or relating to the roots of a word.
 - Music  belonging to the root of a chord.
 - Botany  of or coming from the root or stem base of a plant.
 - N. Amer. informal excellent.
 
n.
    - an advocate of radical political or social reform.
 - Chemistry  a group of atoms behaving as a unit in a number of compounds. See also free radical.
 - the root or base form of a word. 
▸any of the basic set of Chinese characters constituting semantically or functionally significant elements in the composition of other characters.
 - Mathematics  a quantity forming or expressed as the root of another.
 
 
  Derivative
  
    - radicalism n.
  - radicalization
 or radicalisation n.  - radicalize
 or radicalise v.  - radically adv.
  - radicalness n.
 
   
  Etymology
  ME: from late L. radicalis, from L. radix, radic- ‘root’.