radical

Meanings

Adjective

Noun

  • A member of the most progressive wing of the Liberal Party; someone favouring social reform (but generally stopping short of socialism).
  • A member of an influential, centrist political party favouring moderate social reform, a republican constitution, and secular politics.
  • A person with radical opinions.
  • A root (of a number or quantity).
  • In logographic writing systems such as the Chinese writing system, the portion of a character (if any) that provides an indication of its meaning, as opposed to phonetic.
  • In Semitic languages, any one of the set of consonants (typically three) that make up a root.
  • A group of atoms, joined by covalent bonds, that take part in reactions as a single unit.
  • A free radical.
  • Given an ideal I in a commutative ring R, another ideal, denoted Rad(I) or \sqrt{I}, such that an element x ∈ R is in Rad(I) if, for some positive integer n, xn ∈ I; equivalently, the intersection of all prime ideals containing I.
  • Given a ring R, an ideal containing elements of R that share a property considered, in some sense, "not good".
  • The intersection of maximal submodules of a given module.
  • The product of the distinct prime factors of a given positive integer.

Related

Similar words

Opposite words

Origin

  • From French radical, from Late Latin rādīcālis, from Latin rādix; see radix.

Modern English dictionary

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