Meaning & use
rootlessness
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Meaning
noununcountable
The state of having no strong ties to a particular place, community, or way of life.
Grammar: Uncountable; used with 'a sense of' or 'feelings of' rather than a plural.
Patterns
- a sense of rootlessness
- feelings of rootlessness
- rootlessness among people
After moving to a new city every year, she began to feel a deep sense of rootlessness.
The novel explores the rootlessness of people who leave their homeland and never settle anywhere else.
Many young people experience rootlessness when they move away from their families for work.
Common combinations
- a sense of rootlessness
- He described a sense of rootlessness that came from growing up in many different countries.
- deep rootlessness
- Her poetry expresses a deep rootlessness and longing for home.
- feelings of rootlessness
- The survey found feelings of rootlessness among recent graduates.
- rootlessness and alienation
- The film is about rootlessness and alienation in modern cities.
Synonyms and how they differ
- displacement
- Displacement often suggests being forced to leave home, while rootlessness can also be a personal feeling of not belonging anywhere.
- alienation
- Alienation focuses on feeling separated from others or from society, whereas rootlessness focuses on lacking a place or community to belong to.
- homelessness
- Homelessness usually means not having a physical place to live, while rootlessness is more about emotional or cultural belonging.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: rootlessness or uprootedness?
rootlessness vs uprootedness
Uprootedness emphasizes being removed from a place, often suddenly, while rootlessness emphasizes the ongoing state of not having roots.
Practice
Choose the sentence that uses 'rootlessness' correctly.
Choose one answer.
Option 0 uses 'rootlessness' as an uncountable noun with 'a' to mean a feeling of not belonging. Option 1 is wrong because it describes a physical lack of roots, which is not the usual meaning. Option 2 is wrong because 'rootlessness' is a noun, not an adjective. Option 3 is wrong because 'rootlessness' is uncountable and cannot take 'are'.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “rootlessness”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.