fountainhead

American  

[foun-tn-hed] / ˈfaʊn tnˌhɛd /

noun

1. a fountain or spring from which a stream flows; the head or source of a stream.

2. a chief source of anything.

   a fountainhead of information.

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fountainhead British  

/ ˈfaʊntɪnˌhɛd /

noun

1. a spring that is the source of a stream

2. a principal or original source

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Etymology

Origin of fountainhead

First recorded in 1575–85; fountain + head

Example Sentences

The fountainhead of American bohemia, Greenwich Village has always departed from the straight and narrow.

From New York Times • Nov. 21, 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

It would mean acknowledging that Aryans or their Vedic culture were not the singular fountainhead of Indian civilisation and that its earliest sources lay elsewhere.

From BBC • Dec. 30, 2018

Those guys, to me, were like the fountainhead of everything that I did, you know from the time I was a little kid I was obsessed with Laurel and Hardy.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 4, 2018

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