The wing root is the part of the wing on a fixed-wing aircraft that is closest to the fuselage. On a simple monoplane configuration, this is usually easy to identify. On parasol wing or multiple boom aircraft, the wing may not have a clear root area.
Wing roots usually bear the highest bending forces in flight and during landing, and they often have fairings to reduce interference drag between the wing and the fuselage.
The opposite end of a wing from the wing root is the wing tip.
Famous quotes containing the words wing and/or root:
“Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,”
—William Morris (1834–1896)
“But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has if he see that it is accidental,—came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him and merely lies there because no revolution or no robber takes it away.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)