🥕 Earthy taste 🌱 Full of roots

rooty

2 6.5

Full of thick underground parts of plants that make the ground uneven

adjective
/ˈruːti/

: raízos

The hikers struggled on the rooty path that twisted through the dense forest.

Examples

Mossy stone steps descend into low clearance, into the sudden updraft of humusy, rooty rot from the earthen floor.

Fiction book (1991)
The garden was filled with rooty plants that extended their tendrils deep into the soil.
A more level right-of-way had been bulldozed across neighboring land to bring in the contractor's equipment, but it was too rutty and rooty for the family car and the pickup.

Fiction book (1990)
Children love to climb the rooty hills that are scattered with small trees and bushes.

Synonyms

rootlike

vsrooty

1 4.4

Having a long thin part that holds and feeds a living thing

also means that those underground plant organs are actually present rather than just similar

rootsy

vsrooty

1 7.9

Ground with many thick parts of trees showing above the soil that make walking uneven

also covers mere resemblance in shape or function rather than actual presence

rhizomorphic

vsrooty

Specialized

9.9

Having a shape like plant roots, often seen in fungi

is broader and can mean actual presence or general similarity outside fungi

How Rooty

rootbound

Specialized

1 8.4

rooty

2 6.5

rootlike

1 4.4

Surface Forms

rooty positive

rootier comparative

rootiest superlative

Morphology

rooty = root (transparent) = root + y

The adjective is a straightforward derivation from 'root' + '-y' meaning 'full of or having the qualities of roots', which learners can infer from the base word.

Etymology

Rooty comes from the simple word root ('the part of a plant under the ground') plus the ending -y ('full of' or 'having'), so rooty means 'full of roots', like a path where roots make walking hard.