noun
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a spring that is the source of a stream
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a principal or original source
Etymology
Origin of fountainhead
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Mr. Brady “couldn’t see it then,” Mr. Anderson writes, “but this reframing would become the foundation of all his future triumphs . . . and the fountainhead of all his greatest trials.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
Though he balked his first fiddle contest, he kept trying, even joining Monroe, the bluegrass fountainhead, onstage at age 9.
From New York Times ● Feb. 28, 2023
Muslims attached to the Gyanvapi mosque said the court-appointed surveyors had mistaken a fountainhead in the water tank as a Hindu idol and motifs were flowers embedded in Persian design.
From Reuters ● May 20, 2022
That’s when a theater kid from Compton, Calif., flew some 3,000 miles from home to begin his freshman year at “The Mecca,” what Howard students call the historically Black fountainhead of talent.
From Washington Post ● May 11, 2022
The only fountainhead which had once been near and which had once sung loudly within him, now murmured softly in the distance.
From "Siddhartha" by Hermann Hesse
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
