The rootless cosmopolitan now had roots for the first time in his life.

ECONOMIST: Barack Obama

Even the prose is weirdly rootless: the multicultural argot of global VIPs who spend their lives at 35, 000 feet.

ECONOMIST: Bagehot: Lessons from 35,000 feet | The

Mr Kerry's personality seems undefined partly because it is rootless and impermanent.

ECONOMIST: John Kerry

These data-workers are not rootless part-timers, as their American equivalents might be.

ECONOMIST: Indian business

"I was rootless and saw nothing special about myself, " he says.

FORBES: Magazine Article

His own rootless childhood had made him extremely self-sufficient, and his natural confidence - some would say arrogance - has made him very sure about his own abilities and opinions.

BBC: Philip the record-setting consort

She grew weary of the rootless life.

FORBES: Life

Tens of millions feel rootless.

FORBES: Fact and Comment

And then there are the engineers themselves, a rootless but engaging brotherhood that travels the world from rack to rack, helping to keep the electronic show on the road, and whose interactions and dealmaking does a lot to shape the geography of the electronic spider's web that now engulfs the planet.

ECONOMIST: How the internet works