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• roots
  roots

  adjective

  (of popular music) going back to the origins of a style, esp in being genuine and unpretentious
• Roots
  Roots

  (1976) A Pulitzer Prize –winning novel by the African-American author Alex Haley, later made into a popular television drama. It traces a black American man's heritage to Africa, where his ancestors had been captured and sold as slaves.

roots

British  

/ ruːts /

adjective

1. (of popular music) going back to the origins of a style, esp in being genuine and unpretentious

   roots rock

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Roots Cultural  

1. (1976) A Pulitzer Prize –winning novel by the African-American author Alex Haley, later made into a popular television drama. It traces a black American man's heritage to Africa, where his ancestors had been captured and sold as slaves.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• rootsy
  adjective

Example Sentences

As Candacy Taylor puts it in her 2020 book “Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America,” “the open road wasn’t open to all.”

From Los Angeles Times • May 12, 2026

Britain “effectively reduced Iran to the status of a British protectorate,” according to Stephen Kinzer in All the Shah’s Men External link: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.

From Barron's • Mar. 5, 2026

Roots, stems, leaves, and peeled fruits were ground separately for analysis.

From Science Daily • Feb. 17, 2026

Programs like Roots of Empathy in Canada and Caring Classrooms in the U.S. have proven highly effective at building kids’ prosocial behavior.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 4, 2025

I studied Latin Roots all morning, for the test.

From "It’s Kind of a Funny Story" by Ned Vizzini