root and branch

idiom

chiefly British

1

: complete or thorough

a root and branch overhaul of local schools

2

: completely or thoroughly

The laws were reformed root and branch.

Examples of root and branch in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The great majority of the country’s monastic institutions were leveled to the ground; some 18,000 monks were killed; and, in a society where about one-third of the adult male population were lamas (though not all living in monasteries), Buddhism was ripped out root and branch. —Aatish Taseer, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2023

Now, in the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas that killed more than 1,500 people and upended that strategy, Israel is looking to tear Hamas out of Gaza root and branch in what most expect will be a long and bloody ground invasion. —Eric Cortellessa, TIME, 20 Oct. 2023

The system that allowed just a few countries to buy nearly all the world’s vaccine supply needs root and branch reform. —Nahashon Aluoka, Forbes, 10 June 2021

To use these new tools wisely, oncologists will have to become de facto evolutionary biologists, examining the genetic variation present in each patient's cancer tissues and devising a strategy to destroy the cancer tree, root and branch. —Jeffrey P. Townsend, Scientific American, 1 Apr. 2018

So, Kevin Wilson's winless Big Ten season could be explained away: start of a new era, a root and branch rebuild. —Zach Osterman, The Indianapolis Star, 20 Nov. 2021

In this worldview, trees fight tooth and nail (or root and branch) to draw sustenance from the soil, collect rain and access sunlight. —Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times, 5 May 2021

But there’s room to do more, to rethink the system root and branch. —Jacob Silverman, The New Republic, 3 Mar. 2021