[UP- 4 + ROOT v.1: cf. UPROOTED pa. pple.] trans. To tear up by the roots; to remove from a fixed position.
1695. Congreve, Taking of Namur, viii. Uprooting Hills … To form the High and Dreadful Scale.
1771. Beattie, Minstrel, I. xxiv. The river … Down the vale thunders, and … Uproots the grove.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., I. 475. Storms and hurricanes sometimes happen, which … uproot trees.
1836–7. Dickens, Sk. Boz, Tales, iv. Mr. Cymon … uprooted the chairs, and removed them further back.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. xxv. 185. We were powerfully shaken, but had no fear of being uprooted.
1877. Huxley, Physiogr., 171. The stalks are not uprooted and carried across the field.
b. fig. To remove as by tearing up; to eradicate, exterminate, destroy.
a. 1620. J. Dyke, Worthy Commun. (1640), 193. Before wee can be rooted in Christ, we must be unrooted and uprooted in regard of our natural condition.
1743. Francis, trans. Hor., Odes, III. xxiv. 52. Tear forth, uprooted from the youthful Breast, The Seeds of each deprav’d Desire.
1813. Shelley, Q. Mab, IX. 191. [To] uproot The germs of misery from the human heart.
1868. Freeman, Norm. Conq., viii. II. 173. That he acted on any settled scheme of uprooting the nationality, the laws, or the language of England is an exploded fable.
Hence Uprootal; Uprooter; Uprooting vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1861. Macm. Mag., V. 22. He would have shrieked like a mandrake at *uprootal.
1890. Clark Russell, Shipmate Louise, II. 285. The sudden uprootal and crash of their one mast and sail.
1828. Campbell, On Battle of Navarino, 10. No! your lofty emprise was to fetter and foil The *uprooter of Greece’s domain!
1882. Blackw. Mag., CXXXII. 102/2. War…—that remorseless and violent uprooter of ordinary life.
1775. Ash s.v., *Uprooting.
1847. Mangan, Poems (1903), 223. But the end of all is Sadness,… Spoliation and Uprooting!
1858. O. W. Holmes, Aut. Breakf.-t., x. 95. The uprooting of the ancient gravestones in … our city burial-grounds.
1818. Byron, Ch. Har., IV. clxxiii. The *uprooting wind which tears The oak from his foundation.
1880. Meredith, Tragic Com. (1881), 265. Should there come no preternatural uprooting tempest.
