Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A person or thing from which something comes into being or is derived or obtained.
  • noun The point of origin of a stream or river. synonym: origin.
  • noun One, such as a person or document, that supplies information.
  • noun Physics The point or part of a system where energy or mass is added to the system.
  • transitive verb To specify the origin of (a communication); document.
  • transitive verb To obtain (materials or parts) from another business, country, or locale for manufacture.
  • transitive verb To outsource or insource (tasks or jobs, for example).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A rising; a rise; a soaring.
  • noun A spring; a fountainhead; a wellhead; any collection of water on or under the surface of the ground in which a stream originates.
  • noun A first cause; an origin; one who or that which originates or gives rise to anything.
  • To rise, as a hawk; swoop; in general, to swoop down; plunge; sink; souse. See souse.
  • To spring; take rise.
  • To plunge down; souse.
  • noun In geometry, a place of transition from space of n ± 1 into space of n dimensions.
  • noun In electricity: That point or region in an electric circuit at which abrupt difference of potential exists so that current flows from it on one side through the circuit and toward it through the circuit from the other side. Thus a dynamo generator, a voltaic cell, or a charged condenser is a source of current in the circuit in which they are placed.
  • noun In the case of current flow in plane sheets, a point at which the current enters the sheet.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete The act of rising; a rise; an ascent.
  • noun The rising from the ground, or beginning, of a stream of water or the like; a spring; a fountain.
  • noun That from which anything comes forth, regarded as its cause or origin; the person from whom anything originates; first cause.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The person, place, or thing from which something (information, goods, etc.) comes or is acquired.
  • noun Spring; fountainhead; wellhead; any collection of water on or under the surface of the ground in which a stream originates.
  • noun A reporter's informant.
  • noun computing Source code.
  • noun electronics The name of one terminal of a field effect transistor (FET).
  • verb To obtain or procure: used especially of a business resource.
  • verb transitive To find information about (a quotation)'s source (from which it comes): to find a citation for.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (technology) a process by which energy or a substance enters a system
  • verb get (a product) from another country or business
  • noun a person who supplies information
  • noun anything (a person or animal or plant or substance) in which an infectious agent normally lives and multiplies
  • noun a publication (or a passage from a publication) that is referred to
  • verb specify the origin of
  • noun the place where something begins, where it springs into being
  • noun a facility where something is available
  • noun anything that provides inspiration for later work
  • noun someone who originates or causes or initiates something
  • noun a document (or organization) from which information is obtained

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French sourse, from feminine past participle of sourdre, to rise, from Latin surgere; see surge.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English sours, from Old French sorse ("rise, beginning, spring, source"), from sors, past participle of sordre, sourdre, from Latin surgere ("to rise"); see surge. Compare sourd

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Examples

  • From that moment the entire community, abandoning all other plans, give themselves over to hatching their golden egg, experience having taught them that no other source of prosperity can compare with a _source thermale_.

    The Ways of Men Eliot Gregory 1884

  • Then when I need to load a new source file, I clear _source of it's current contents and add a single line run for every line of code in the file.

    DevHawk 2009

  • Failed resolving source node in after node with @source = 'executeData',

    ASP.NET Forums Waldie 2009

  • UPDATE [TheTable] SET [source] = @source .........

    ASP.NET Forums BrianPeal 2009

  • 如果 value 为 空引用(在 Visual Basic 中为 Nothing),或在 source 的调用列表中没有找到 value 的调用列表,则返回 source。

    ???-??????? ?? 2010

  • * % source% - The source of the feed, such as the web site or blog name.

    Digital Point Forums alex190 2010

  • * I spent the better part of an entire day deep inside the Clutter source, trying to determine the source of a bug; I eventually found the _source_ of the bug (#1631), but do not have a proper patch; the PPA includes a patch (which is also in the seed repo, in the patches subdir) that removes the broken optimization, but I'm not sure how to appropriately/fix/it … in any case, this means that the most significant animation bugs are fixed.

    Planet GNOME 2009

  • She would therefore be doing water a greater justice, she explained, paying water a greater honor, if she were to take the name source instead.

    Water Witches Chris Bohjalian 1995

  • Anyone who cites wiki as a source is an idiot: fact

    Matthew Yglesias » Sweden is Neutral, O’Reilly is Stupid 2009

  • At work, management sometimes bands together and starts listening more to themselves and ignoring the truth from the trenches even when the source is their own employees.

    Politics 2010

Comments

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  • Source of the Nile - fine. To source something, rather than finding it or buying it, is no good at all.

    January 30, 2007