uproot

verb

1. (transitive)To tear up (a plant, etc.) by the roots, or as if by the roots; to extirpate, to root up.

   “Mark me! the Lord's hand is stretched out, and will not be withdrawn until his nest be turned up, even as the plough uprooteth and scattereth the nest of the field-mouse and the blind mole; […]”

   “[S]he and Mr. Joseph Tuggs, and Miss Charlotta Tuggs, and Mr. Cymon Tuggs, with their eight feet in a corresponding number of yellow shoes, seated themselves on four rush-bottomed chairs, which, being placed in a soft part of the sand, forthwith sunk down some two feet and a half. […] Mr. Cymon, by an exertion of great personal strength, uprooted the chairs, and removed them further back.”

   “Thou shakest the earth with the thunder of thy terror, and uprootest the huge oaks on the highest hills with the echo of thy voice.”

   “[T]hee only have I loved—for thee only have I bloomed; and when thou uprootest me from thy garden, I must wither and die.”

   “See now what doubt is. It is evil, and unwise, and uprooteth many from the faith; yea, though they be very strong.”

2. (figuratively, transitive)To destroy (something) utterly; to eradicate, exterminate.

   “[B]ravely bearing on, thy will / Is destined an eternal war to wage / With tyranny and falshood, and uproot / The germs of misery from the human heart.”

   “For, having his mind set upon righteousness, and casting away maliciousness, he straightway overthroweth the evil, and uprooteth the sin.”

   “Moreover, Trump’s use of obvious disinformation — the amateurish video he showed Ramaphosa, and his accompanying statements about the “over a thousand” killings of white farmers — to try and make his case has uprooted whatever U.S. credibility had survived over the last several months.”

3. (figuratively, transitive)To remove (someone or something) from a familiar circumstance, especially suddenly and unwillingly.

   “[H]ave ye a Sultan who ruleth over you and is tyrannical in his rule and under whose hand you are; one who, if any of you commit an offence, taketh his goods and ruineth him and who, whenas he will, turneth you out of house and home and uprooteth you, stock and branch?”

   “The Anglification of Scotland has been proceeding apace to the damage of its education, its music, its literature, its genius, and the generation that is growing up under this influence is uprooted from its past, and, being deprived of the inspiration of its nationality, is also deprived of its communal sense.”

4. (intransitive, reflexive)Of oneself or someone: to move away from a familiar environment (for example, to live elsewhere).
5. (transitive)Of a pig or other animal: to dig up (something in the ground) using the snout; to rummage for (something) in the ground; to grub up, to root, to rout.

noun

1. The act of uprooting something.

   “With the uproot of the Chinese commercial system in the 1890s such a crisis was bound to surface.”