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fountainhead noun (STATUE) [ C ] a decorative object made of stone, metal, etc. with a small opening that water comes out of as part of a fountain (= a decorative stream of water in a garden, lake, etc.): The yard is full of huge blue and green glazed pots, tiles, plaques and decorative fountainheads. More examples.
- Penguin
- Albatross
- Rhinoceros
- Ostrich
- Hippopotamus
- Raccoon
- Moose
- Tiger
- Leopard
- Cheetah
No one is entirely sure why penguins are called “penguins” (not helped by the fact that they were once called “arsefeet”), but the best theory we have is that penguin is a corruption of the Welsh pen gwyn, literally “white head.” The name pen gwyn originally applied to the great auk, an enormous flightless black-and-white seabird of the North Atlan...
This is a strange one: In the 16th century, the Arabic word for a sea eagle, al-ghattas, was borrowed into Spanish and became the Spanish word for a pelican, alcatraz (which is where the island with the prison gets its name). Alcatraz was then borrowed into English and became albatross in the late 17th century—but at each point in history, the word...
Rhinoceros literally means “nose-horned.” The rhino– part is the same as in words like rhinoplasty, the medical name for a nose job, while the –ceros part is the same root found in words like triceratops and keratin, the tough, fibrous protein that makes up our hair and nails and rhino horns.
The English word ostrich is a corruption of the Latin avis struthio—avis meaning “bird” and struthio being the Latin word for the ostrich itself. In turn, struthio comes from the Greek name for the ostrich, strouthos meagle, which literally means“big sparrow.”
Hippopotamus literally means “river horse” in Greek. It might not look much like a horse, but it certainly lives in rivers—and let’s be honest, a hippolook more like a horse than an ostrich looks like a sparrow.
Raccoon is derived from an Algonquin word that means “he scratches with his hands.” Before that was adopted into English, raccoonswere known as “wash-bears” (and still are in several other languages, including Dutch and German), which refers to their perceived habit of washing their food before eating it.
Moose, too, is thought to be an Algonquin word, meaning “he strips it off,” a reference to the animal’s fondness for tearing bark off trees.
Our word tiger goes all the way back to Ancient Greek, but the Greeks had borrowed the word from Asia, and it’s a mystery where the word actually originated. One theory is that it comes from tighri, a word from Avestan (an ancient Iranian language) that means “arrow” or “sharp object,” but that’s only conjecture. Speaking of big cats…
Confusingly, leopard literally means “lion-panther” or “lion-leopard.” Variations of the word pard have been used to mean “leopard” or “panther” since the days of Ancient Greek, while leon was the Greek, and eventually Latin, word for a lion. The word lionitself, meanwhile, is so old that its origins probably lie in the impossibly ancient languages...
It derives from chita, which is the Hindi word for “leopard” and probably comes from a Sanskrit wordliterally meaning “spotted.”
foun· tain· head ˈfau̇n-tᵊn-ˌhed. Synonyms of fountainhead. 1. : a spring that is the source of a stream. 2. : principal source : origin. Did you know? When it first entered English in the late 16th century, fountainhead was used only in a literal sense—to refer to the source of a stream.
All you need to know about "FOUNTAINHEAD" in one place: definitions, pronunciations, synonyms, grammar insights, collocations, examples, and translations.
The word 'fountainhead' is correct and usable in written English. You can use it to describe a person or thing that is the original source of ideas or other creative work. For example, you could say "He is a fountainhead of creativity, constantly coming up with new, innovative ideas.".
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5 days ago · fountainhead in American English. (ˈfauntnˌhed) 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. Most material © 2005, 1997, 1991 by Penguin Random House LLC.
