Other forms: uprooted, uprooting, uproots
To uproot is to pull a plant out by the roots, or to force somebody to move. Uproot the weeds, uprooted by the storm, uprooted his family.
The figurative sense is the heavier one: uprooting a family means taking away everything that held them in place, and the metaphor is exact. A plant that is uprooted usually dies, which is the force of it. Note that the compound is up plus root and is straightforward.
1verbuprootTo pull a plant out by the roots.
“The gardener uprooted the old rose bush and planted a young apple tree.”
2verbforceTo force somebody to leave their home.
“The war uprooted thousands of families from their villages.”
uproot is a pulling out.
Up plus root. Root comes from Old Norse rot and is related to the Latin radix.
Proto-Indo-European
*wréh₂ds — root
Proto-Germanic
*wrōts
Old Norse
rót
Old English
rōt
Middle English
rote
English, today
uproot
Built from
From up + root. Root is derived from root (“underground part of a plant”), from Middle English rote, from Old English rōt, rōte, from Old Norse rót, from Proto-Germanic wrōts, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European wréh₂ds (“root”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Word Building