The AI-powered English dictionary
plural rootstocks
(agriculture) A healthy and vigorous-rooted plant that is used in grafting, most commonly as a sound base to support a scion that bears desirable fruit in orchard culture. examples
(figurative, by extension) The necessary basis for something to develop. quotations examples
We know more - vastly more - about how we are governed, and that knowledge is the rootstock of consent.
2009 January 30, Simon Jenkins, “For real secrets we already have the one-and-a-half-year memoir rule”, in The Guardian