adjective
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012Other Word Forms
- rootlessness noun
Etymology
Origin of rootless
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English roteles; root 1, + -less ( def. )
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
From a well-known Kolkata family, he drifted - alcoholic, rootless, a man described by his wife as having "this terrible business of sitting around doing nothing. Nothing. No reading, no talking, no thinking".
From BBC
For a rootless young man with sensualist inclinations, it was the perfect getaway.
From Salon
Suddenly, she’s brandishing a mop and pail everywhere like a rootless knight without a quest or a horse.
From Los Angeles Times
It’s been a very long while since a show featuring a rootless protagonist managed to keep its edge and relatability without doing itself in with narrative drift.
From Salon
Most famously, there was "The Future," released in 1992 at the moment of liberal democracy’s supposed global triumph, which offered an eerie forecast of a rootless new century, struggling with the loss of existential meaning:
From Salon
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
