radical

Meanings

Adjective

• Favoring fundamental change, or change at the root cause of a matter.
• Pertaining to a root .
• Pertaining to the basic or intrinsic nature of something.
• Thoroughgoing; far-reaching.
• Of or pertaining to the root of a word.
• Produced using the root of the tongue.
• Involving free radicals.
• Relating to a radix or mathematical root.
• Excellent; awesome.

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 $\backslash sqrt\{I\}$, 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

• primitive

Opposite words

• derivative, derived

Origin

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