source
/sɔːs//sɔɹs/
source noun: the person, place, or thing from which something (information, goods, etc.) comes or is acquired.
Noun
source (plural sources)
- The person, place, or thing from which something (information, goods, etc.) comes or is acquired.
- The accused refused to reveal the source of the illegal drugs she was selling.
- To this day I do not know the source of the terrible screams that night in the labyrinth. Perhaps an owl. Perhaps something else...1989 May, Uwe George, “Venezuela's Islands in Time”, in National Geographic, volume 175, number 5, page 544
- Synonyms:
- fund, storehouse
- Spring; fountainhead; wellhead; any collection of water on or under the surface of the ground in which a stream originates.
- The main sources of the Euphrates River are the Karasu and Murat Rivers.
- The O-erh-ch'i-ssu River begins in the southern section of the lofty A-erh-t'ai Mountains of Sinkiang. This river is over 2,900 kilometers long and has a large delta area rich in minerals such as gold, iron, copper, lead, zinc, mercury, mica, crystal and "ping-chou-shih" [3056 3166 4258 possibly...1969 July 3 [1969 May 28], “A View of the O-erh-ch'i-ssu River Delta”, in Translations on People's Republic of China, number 59, United States Joint Publications Research Service, sourced from Hong...
- A reporter's informant.
- Source code.
- The name of one terminal of a field effect transistor (FET).
- A node in a directed graph whose edges all go out from it; one with no entering edges.
- The domain of a function; the object which a morphism points from.
- Coordinate term: target
Verb
source (third-person singular simple present sources, present participle sourcing, simple past and past participle sourced)
- To obtain or procure: used especially of a business resource.
- But the point when it would have to look at alternative new-build vehicles was always looming large, and there would inevitably be a finite number of Class 66s it could source from elsewhere, and a limit to other locomotives it could re-power.2023 July 12, Pip Dunn, “Class 99s: "ultimate Electro-Diesel"”, in RAIL, number 987, page 52
- To find information about (a quotation)'s source (from which it comes): to find a citation for.
source meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
source in Hindi
- the person, place or thing from which something (information, goods, etc.) comes or is acquired
- स्रोत srot, उद्गम udgam
- spring etc.
- चश्मा caśmā, स्रोत srot
source in Tamil
- ஆதாரம், மூலம்
source in Marathi
- the person, place or thing from which something (information, goods, etc.) comes or is acquired
- स्रोत srot
source in Urdu
- the person, place or thing from which something (information, goods, etc.) comes or is acquired
- مَنْبَع manba', مَصْدَر masdar
- spring etc.
- چَشْمَہ caśma
More languagesFewer languages
- source in Bengali
- উৎস utśo
- source in Telugu
- మూలం
- source in Malayalam
- സ്രോതസ്സ് srōtassŭ, ഉറവിടം uṟaviṭaṁ
- source in Kannada
- ಸ್ರೋತ srōta
- source in Punjabi
- ਮੰਬਾ mambā, ਸ੍ਰੋਤ srot, ਸੋਮਾ somā, ਜ਼ਰੀਆ zarīā
- source in Gujarati
- બી bī
- source in Odia
- ମୂଳ muḷa, ତୀର୍ଥ tirtha
- source in Assamese
- উঁহ ũh, পুং puṅ, গুৰি guri
- source in Nepali
- जरा jarā
- source in Tagalog
- pinagkuhanan, pinagkunan
- source in Arabic
- مَصْدَر maṣdar, مَصَادِر maṣādir, عَيْن ʕayn
- source in Malay
- sumber
- source in Indonesian
- sumber, narasumber
- source in Persian
- بنخان bonxān
- source in Vietnamese
- nguồn
Examples of source in a sentence
- More than a mere source of Promethean sustenance to thwart the cold and cook one's meat, wood was quite simply mankind's first industrial and manufacturing fuel.2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion:
- It is hardly surprising that pension funds, insurers and endowments are searching for new sources of return.2013 July 6, “The rise of smart beta”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8843, page 68:
- At the source of the O-erh-ch'i-ssu River, the A-erh-t'ai Mountains reach more than 3,000 meters above sea level.1969 July 3 [1969 May 28], “A View of the O-erh-ch'i-ssu River Delta”, in Translations on People's Republic of China, number 59, United...
- Most of the Himalayan rivers have been relatively untouched by dams near their sources.2013 August 16, John Vidal, “Dams endanger ecology of Himalayas”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 10, page 8:
Synonyms of source
Antonyms
Forms of source
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | sources |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | sources |
| present participle | sourcing |
| past participle | sourced |
| past | sourced |
Origin of source
From Middle English sours, from Old French sorse (“rise, beginning, spring, source”), from sors, past participle of sordre, sourdre, from Latin surgō (“to rise”), which is composed of sub- (“up from below”) + regō (“lead, rule”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃réǵeti (“to straighten; right”), from the root *h₃reǵ-. Doublet of surge.
Words formed from source
- airmass source region
- backsource
- biosource
- broken source
- closed source
- closed-source
- crowd-source
- data source
- eigensource
- energy source
- e-source
- inner source
- InnerSource
- insource
- intersource
- life-source
- light source
- microsource
- multisource
- nanosource
- open-source
- open source
- orphan source
- paleosource
- point source
- power source
- quasi-stellar radio-source
- quasi-stellar radio source
- radio source
- sealed source
- second source
- source-available
- sourcebook
- source configuration management
- source control
- source criticism
- source document
- source domain
- source file
- sourcehood
- source language
- sourceless
- source material
- sourceness
- source routing
- source text
- sourceware
- sourcework
- souse
- ur-source
- biosourced
- insourcing
- missource
- outsource
- outsourcing
- sourceable
- sourcing
- unsourced
Phrases with source
Words that rhyme with source
Questions about source
- What does source mean?
- Source means the person, place, or thing from which something (information, goods, etc.) comes or is acquired.
- What is source in Hindi?
- Source in Hindi is स्रोत (srot), उद्गम (udgam), चश्मा (caśmā). See Source meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use source in a sentence?
- More than a mere source of Promethean sustenance to thwart the cold and cook one's meat, wood was quite simply mankind's first industrial and manufacturing fuel.
- What part of speech is source?
- Source can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce source?
- Source is pronounced /sɔːs/ (UK).
- What is the plural of source?
- The plural of source is sources.
Words near source in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: source (page history and authors); source (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); উৎস (Bengali) (page history and authors); source (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ಸ್ರೋತ (Kannada) (page history and authors); ਜ਼ਰੀਆ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); બી (Gujarati) (page history and authors); ତୀର୍ଥ (Odia) (page history and authors); উঁহ (Assamese) (page history and authors); जरा (Nepali) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-uk-source.ogg, en-us-source.ogg.
Cite this entry: “source.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/source. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.