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’.