source
/sɔɹs/noun, verb
source is spelled S-O-U-R-C-E. The wrong spelling people search most is souce: about 170 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 36 of all searches for the word. Source is a noun meaning “The person, place, or thing from which something (information, goods, etc.) comes or is acquired”. The plural of source is sources.
How many letters and syllables are in source?
| Letters | 6: S-O-U-R-C-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 141 times per million words; the 737th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, souce, about 170 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Rhymes with | |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell source?
Source is spelled S-O-U-R-C-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 36 of the searches for source in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is source?
Source appears 141 times per million words in written English, the 737th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce source?
- UK /sɔːs/
- US /sɔɹs/
- /so(ː)ɹs/
Source has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-source.ogg, En-us-source.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with source
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: sauce (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Also written: sauce.
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with source?
8 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as source from its last stressed vowel (/ɔɹs/):
Spelled with the same letters in another order: course, crouse.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of source
- sources plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- sourcing participle, present
- sourced participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does source mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The person, place, or thing from which something (information, goods, etc.) comes or is acquired.
The accused refused to reveal the source of the illegal drugs she was selling.
- 2
Spring; fountainhead; wellhead; any collection of water on or under the surface of the ground in which a stream originates.
The main sources of the Euphrates River are the Karasu and Murat Rivers.
- 3
A reporter's informant.
- 4
Source code.
- 5
The name of one terminal of a field effect transistor (FET).
- 6
A node in a directed graph whose edges all go out from it; one with no entering edges.
- 7
The domain of a function; the object which a morphism points from.
Coordinate term: target
verb
- 1
To obtain or procure: used especially of a business resource.
- 2
To find information about (a quotation)'s source (from which it comes): to find a citation for.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate source?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of source: src.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Source in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | source , sourcer |
| German | Quelle, Ursprung , belegen, beziehen |
| Portuguese | origem, fonte , nascente, cabeceira, exsurgência |
| Spanish | fuente, origen , fontana, fluencia, dimanación |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does source come from?
From Middle English sours, from Old French sorse (“rise, beginning, spring, source”), from sors, past participle of sordre, sourdre, from Latin surgō (“to rise”), which is composed of sub- (“up from below”) + regō (“lead, rule”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃réǵeti (“to straighten; right”), from the root *h₃reǵ-. Doublet of surge.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).