The root There is some confusion on the questioner's part. A root is a root.
Numbers have many roots:
The square root of 64 is 8 since 8 squared is 64: 8² = 8 × 8 = 64
The cube root of 64 is 4 since 4 cubed is 64: 4³ = 4 × 4 × 4 = 64
The square root of a number x is sometimes called "radical x" because x appear after the radical (or square root) symbol: √x
As square roots are used a lot, it is also often abbreviated from "square root" to just "root", for example √2 can be read as "root 2" though to be strictly correct it is "square root of 2".
Roots also refer to solutions to equations (linear, quadratics, cubics, or higher polynomials) where they equal 0, for example x = -3 and x = 2 are the roots of the equation x² + x - 6 = 0; x = -2, x = 1 and x = 4 are the roots of x³ - 3x² - 6x + 8 = 0.
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A root.
The square root
no, every number is a real number --- There are numbers that are not real numbers. They are called imaginary numbers, and have the property that when they are squared, the result is negative. The square root of -1 is called i, and the square root of any other negative number is i times the square root of the absolute value of the number. So the square root of -4 is 2i.
The square root of any negative number is not even a 'real' number. It's called 'imaginary', because there's no number you can multiply by itself to get a negative number. The square root of 101 is irrational.
The square root of negative 64 isn't even a real number. In math and engineering, it's called an "imaginary number".