# source

Pronunciation: US say "SORS" /sɔɹs/; UK say "SAWS" /sɔːs/

## Noun

1. The person, place, or thing from which something such as information or goods comes or is obtained.
   - Simple: The person, place, or thing that something comes from.
   - _Investigators traced the contamination back to a single source._
   - _The museum verifies the source of every artifact it acquires._
2. An informant who supplies a reporter with information for a news story.
   - Simple: A person who gives a reporter information for a story.
   - _The story relied on a single anonymous source._
   - _Editors pressed her to reveal her source, but she refused._
3. The human-readable program code that a developer writes before it is compiled or run.
   - Simple: The written computer instructions that people can read and change.
   - _She published the source on a public repository._
   - _Reviewing the source revealed a serious security flaw._
5. The spring, fountainhead, or body of water on or under the ground where a stream originates.
   - Simple: The spring or place where a stream of water begins.
   - _Explorers spent years searching for the source of the Nile._
   - _The stream's source lies in an underground aquifer._

## Verb

4. To obtain or procure something, especially a resource that a business needs.
   - Simple: To get or buy something that a business needs.
   - _Manufacturers struggled to source semiconductors during the shortage._
   - _The company sources its coffee beans directly from farmers in Colombia._
6. To find and identify the origin of a quotation, claim, or piece of information, providing a citation for it.
   - Simple: To find where a quote or fact came from and show proof of it.
   - _Researchers must source each claim before publication._
   - _She painstakingly sourced every figure in the dissertation._

## Other meanings

- (noun) One of the three terminals of a field-effect transistor, the point at which charge carriers enter the device's channel.
- (noun) In mathematics, the set a function maps from, its domain, or the object at which a morphism begins.
- (noun) In a directed graph, a node whose edges all point outward: one with no incoming edges.

## Origin

From Middle English sours, borrowed from Old French sorse ("rise, beginning, spring, source"), which came from the verb sordre/sourdre, from Latin surgō ("to rise"). This was made from sub- ("up from below") plus regō ("lead, rule"), ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to straighten." It is a doublet of surge.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/source (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).