Grassroots

How to spell grassroots

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce grassroots

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does grassroots mean?

1. nounThe ordinary people in a society or organisation, especially as the basis of a political or social movement, rather than its leaders.
2. adjectiveRelating to or originating from the ordinary people at a local level rather than from leaders or central organisation.

Grassroots in a sentence

• noun

  The campaign was driven by grassroots rather than wealthy donors.

• adjective

  The volunteers organised a grassroots campaign to save the local library.

• noun

  Party leaders were warned to listen to the grassroots before the next vote.

• adjective

  She built her business through grassroots word-of-mouth marketing.

Where does grassroots come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This compound comes straight from native English: 'grass', from the Old English 'gærs', and 'root', from the Old Norse 'rot', a word for the underground part of a plant that anchors it. Quite literally it names the roots of grass, the layer hidden just beneath the soil where ordinary growth begins. The figurative political and social sense arose in early twentieth-century America, where it described support coming from ordinary people at the local level rather than from leaders at the top. The image is powerful and deliberate: just as grass grows up from countless small roots in the ground, a grassroots movement grows up from ordinary individuals rather than being imposed from above. Because it is built from two very familiar everyday words, the only real spelling question is whether to join them and whether to keep both plural 's' letters, and the standard modern form keeps them fused together.

How the word is built

• grass (the plant)
• roots (plural of root: the base part of a plant)