Word of a Week : fountainhead

This week`s theme is: The source.

fountainhead `fáuntinhèd (noun)

1. a spring that is the source of a stream: "This tiny fountainhead turns into a rushing stream 5 miles from here."

2. an abundant source of something abstract, as knowledge, etc.

Origin:

Approximately 1580; from `fountain` + `head.`

In action:

"SO: Considering your predispositions, which modern artists do you like to listen to?

TW: Prince. He`s out there. He`s uncompromising. He`s a real fountainhead. Takes dangerous chances. He`s androgynous, wicked, voodoo. I like a lot of rap stuff, because it`s real, immediate. Generally, I like things as they begin, because the `music industry tears at you. Most artists come out the other side like a dead carp."

Steve Oney. `Interview with Mr. Tom Waits Playboy Magazine (March 1988).

"Vast government contracts have corrupted the American university system, turning off the fountainhead of unfettered ideas and scientific discovery. Multibillion-dollar federal R&D budgets have replaced the solitary inventor with veritable armies of scientists and engineers in laboratories across the country. Public policy itself has become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

2005? Try 1961. The paragraph above was taken with only minor changes from President Dwight Eisenhower`s famous farewell address."

Alan H. Goldstein. "The (really scary) soldier of the future," `Thanks to nanotechnology, he`ll be a lethal superman who can heal himself. Salon.com (October 20, 2005).

"The bewitching song of El Dorado--fabled fountainhead of gold--still echoes along Venezuela`s longest river as it flows past rain forest burrows, cattle ranches, and natural caches of mineral wealth. The Orinoco is a river of many contrasts, and author Donovan Webster visited some of the people who rely on it for both survival and profit."

"Story Highlights: The Orinoco," National Geographic Magazine (April 1998).

       Have a wonderful weekend!