(literally, botany) Of a plant, having deep roots.
- 1726, Jonathan Swift (translator), “Horace, Book I, Ode XIV” in Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, London: T. Woodward and Charles Davis, 1736, Volume 5, p. 193,
Poor floating Isle, tost on ill Fortune’s Waves,
Ordain’d by Fate to be the Land of Slaves;
Shall moving Delos now deep-rooted stand,
Thou, fixt of old, be now the moving Land?
- 1791, William Cowper (translator), The Odyssey, Book 13, in The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, London: J. Johnson, Volume 2, p. 302,
And now the flying bark full near approach’d,
When Neptune, meeting her, with out-spread palm
Depress’d her at a stroke, and she became
Deep-rooted stone.
Of a non-living object, deeply and firmly embedded (in the ground, etc.)
(figurative) Firmly established in thought or behavior and difficult to change.
- They avoid conflict at all costs because of their deep-rooted fear of upsetting people.
- 1850, Charlotte Brontë, letter to Elizabeth Gaskell dated 27 August, , in Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, London: Smith, Elder, 1857, Volume 2, p. 177,
Certainly there are evils which our own efforts will best reach; but as certainly there are other evils—deep-rooted in the foundations of the social system—which no efforts of ours can touch: