- of or going to the root or origin; fundamental: There is a radical difference between the two interpretations of the sacred text, one justifying war and the other requiring nonviolent resistance.
- extreme, especially as regards change from accepted or traditional forms: a radical change in the policy of the company.
- favoring drastic political, economic, or social reforms: radical ideas;radical and anarchistic ideologues.
- favoring, supporting, or representing extreme forms of religious fundamentalism: radical fundamentalists and their rejection of modern science.
- forming a basis or foundation: What is the radical reason for his choice?
- existing inherently in a thing or person: radical defects of character.
- characterized by a marked departure from prevailing methods, practices, or ideas, particularly in the arts; experimental; unorthodox: The composer’s radical approach to sound, using timbre and rhythm rather than pitch, was declared “noise” by an influential critic.
- excellent; wonderful; cool; rad: You got here on an electric skateboard? That's radical!
- Mathematics.
- pertaining to or forming a root.
- denoting or pertaining to the radical sign.
- irrational (def. 5b).
- of or pertaining to the root of a word.
- of or arising from the root or the base of the stem.
- a person who holds or follows strong convictions or extreme principles; extremist.
- a person who advocates fundamental political, economic, and social reforms by direct and often uncompromising methods.
- Mathematics.
- a quantity expressed as a root of another quantity.
- the set of elements of a ring, some power of which is contained in a given ideal.
- radical sign.
- Chemistry.
- root1 (def. 12).
- (in Chinese writing) one of 214 ideographic elements used in combination with phonetics to form thousands of different characters.
- of, relating to, or characteristic of the basic or inherent constitution of a person or thing; fundamental
- concerned with or tending to concentrate on fundamental aspects of a matter; searching or thoroughgoing
- favouring or tending to produce extreme or fundamental changes in political, economic, or social conditions, institutions, habits of mind, etc
- (of treatment) aimed at removing the source of a disease
- very good; excellent
- of, relating to, or arising from the root or the base of the stem of a plant
- of, relating to, or containing roots of numbers or quantities
- of or relating to the root of a word
- a person who favours extreme or fundamental change in existing institutions or in political, social, or economic conditions
- a root of a number or quantity, such as ³√5, √ x
- Also: radicle chem
- short for free radical
- another name for group (def. 10)
- linguistics another word for root 1 (def. 9)
- (in logographic writing systems such as that used for Chinese) a part of a character conveying lexical meaning
