5 definitions
for source
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :
Source \Source\, n. [OE. sours, OF. sourse, surse, sorse, F.
source, fr. OF. sors, p. p. of OF. sordre, surdre, sourdre,
to spring forth or up, F. sourdre, fr. L. surgere to lift or
raise up, to spring up. See Surge, and cf. Souse to
plunge or swoop as a bird upon its prey.]
1. The act of rising; a rise; an ascent. [Obs.]
[1913 Webster]
Therefore right as an hawk upon a sours
Up springeth into the air, right so prayers . . .
Maken their sours to Goddes ears two. --Chaucer.
[1913 Webster]
2. The rising from the ground, or beginning, of a stream of
water or the like; a spring; a fountain.
[1913 Webster]
Where as the Poo out of a welle small
Taketh his firste springing and his sours.
--Chaucer.
[1913 Webster]
Kings that rule
Behind the hidden sources of the Nile. --Addison.
[1913 Webster]
3. That from which anything comes forth, regarded as its
cause or origin; the person from whom anything originates;
first cause.
[1913 Webster]
This source of ideas every man has wholly in
himself. --Locke.
[1913 Webster]
The source of Newton's light, of Bacon's sense.
--Pope.
[1913 Webster]
Syn: See Origin.
[1913 Webster]
From WordNet (r) 2.0 :
source
n 1: the place where something begins, where it springs into
being; "the Italian beginning of the Renaissance";
"Jupiter was the origin of the radiation"; "Pittsburgh
is the source of the Ohio River"; "communism's Russian
root" [syn: beginning, origin, root, rootage]
2: a person who supplies information [syn: informant]
3: a publication (or a passage from a publication) that is
referred to; "he carried an armful of references back to
his desk"; "he spent hours looking for the source of that
quotation" [syn: reference]
4: a document (or organization) from which information is
obtained; "the reporter had two sources for the story"
5: a facility where something is available
6: anything that provides inspiration for later work [syn: seed,
germ]
7: someone who originates or causes or initiates something; "he
was the generator of several complaints" [syn: generator,
author]
8: (technology) a process by which energy or a substance enters
a system; "a heat source"; "a source of carbon dioxide"
[ant: sink]
9: anything (a person or animal or plant or substance) in which
an infectious agent normally lives and multiplies; "an
infectious agent depends on a reservoir for its survival"
[syn: reservoir]
v 1: get (a product) from another country or business; "She
sourced a supply of carpet"; "They are sourcing from
smaller companies"
2: specify the origin of; "The writer carefully sourced her
report"
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 :
119 Moby Thesaurus words for "source":
adviser, ambition, announcer, annunciator, antecedent, aspiration,
author, authority, authorship, basis, begetter, beginning,
birthplace, bonanza, calling, cause, channel, commencement,
communicant, communicator, conception, consideration, cornucopia,
creator, dawn, dawning, derivation, determinant, documentation,
enlightener, expert witness, font, fount, fountain, fountainhead,
genesis, goal, gold mine, gossipmonger, grapevine, grass roots,
ground, guiding light, guiding star, head, headstream, headwater,
headwaters, ideal, inception, informant, information center,
information medium, informer, inspiration, intention, interviewee,
lode, lodestar, mainspring, matter, mine, monitor, mother, motive,
mouthpiece, newsmonger, notifier, onset, opening, origin, original,
origination, originator, outset, parent, paternity, press,
principle, provenance, provenience, public relations officer,
publisher, quarry, radical, radio, radix, reason, reporter,
resource, rise, rising, riverhead, root, roots, rootstock, sake,
score, source of supply, spokesman, spring, staple, start,
starting, stem, stock, taproot, television, teller, tipster, tout,
ulterior motive, vein, vocation, well, wellhead, wellspring,
whence, witness
From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) :
source n. [very common] In reference to software, `source' is
invariably shorthand for `source code', the preferred human-readable and
human-modifiable form of the program. This is as opposed to object code,
the derived binary executable form of a program. This shorthand readily
takes derivative forms; one may speak of "the sources of a system" or of
"having source".
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) :
source
source code