Radical

How to spell radical

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce radical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does radical mean?

1. adjectiveAffecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching and thorough rather than superficial.
2. nounA person who supports extreme or thorough political or social reform.
3. nounIn mathematics, the root sign or a quantity under it; in chemistry, an atom or group of atoms with an unpaired electron.

Radical in a sentence

• adjective

  The company announced a radical overhaul of its pricing structure.

• noun

  As a young radical, she campaigned hard for sweeping electoral reform.

• noun

  The equation simplifies once you remove the square radical from the denominator.

• adjective

  A radical change in diet helped lower his blood pressure within months.

• noun

  The newspaper dismissed him as a radical with no interest in compromise.

• noun

  Antioxidants neutralise the free radical that can damage cells.

Where does radical come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin radicalis, meaning 'relating to a root', which was built on radix, the ordinary Latin word for the root of a plant. English took it on board in the late 1300s, at first in a quite literal and bodily sense: medieval writers spoke of the 'radical moisture' or 'radical humour' thought to sustain life at its very root. From that idea of going to the root of something grew the modern figurative meanings: a radical change reaches down to the fundamentals, and by the early 1800s a political radical was someone who wanted reform from the root upward. The same radix lives on in everyday relatives such as 'radish' (literally a root vegetable) and 'eradicate' (to pull up by the roots). Remembering that buried root, radix, also fixes the spelling, since the stressed first syllable hides the unstressed schwa in the middle that often trips writers up.

How the word is built

• radic- (from Latin radix: root)
• -al (adjective/noun suffix)