radical

[bbeeton]

This word has a number of different meanings but the one I'm interested in is its usage as the organizing element of Chinese and Japanese dictionaries. An explanation of the order in which participating countries were positioned in the opening procession of the Winter Olympics stated that Malta came before Australia because the number of strokes in Malta's name in Chinese is fewer than in the Chinese name for Australia. That is undoubtedly true, but the Chinese orthography contains several different radicals with only one stroke, even more with two strokes, etc., etc. So number of strokes isn't an adequate explanation, but radical (for which there is a clearly defined ordering) is.

An entry for "maven" in this forum includes the concept of "radical (root)" in an etymological discussion, and surely this is related.

Another not-so-common meaning of "radical" is the symbol for a (square) root, or surd.

I guess I should stop here, before the discussion becomes too absurd.

[Slava]

This one does dig deep, with wide-ranging ramifications, branching off in various directions. Even unto radishes.

Surd is a perfectly good word for this forum, too, as it means voiceless, as opposed to sonant. A good high-falutin' term to know for discussion of language.

Absurd itself visited the Dr.'s office in 2019, here.