provenance
verbEtymology Borrowed from French provenance (“origin”), from Middle French provenant, present participle of provenir (“come forth, arise”), from Latin provenio (“to come forth”).
1
To establish the provenance of something
provenance
nounUK /ˈpɹɒ.və.nəns/ · US /ˈpɹɑ.və.nəns/
Etymology Borrowed from French provenance (“origin”), from Middle French provenant, present participle of provenir (“come forth, arise”), from Latin provenio (“to come forth”).
1
Place or source of origin.
- Many supermarkets display the provenance of their food products.
- Within this melee of intersections between English and Cantonese, the students, being themselves bilingually fluent, were able to navigate with perfect ease in communicative contexts where the provenance of a certain term or expression matters little.2015, James Lambert, “Lexicography as a teaching tool: A Hong Kong case study”, in Lan Li, Jamie McKeown, Liming Liu, editors, Dictionaries and corpora: Innovations in reference science. Proceedings of ASIALEX 2015 Hong Kong, Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, page 147:
2
Archaeology, History, Human sciences, Sciences The place and time of origin of some artifact or other object. See Usage notes below.
- This spear is of Viking provenance.
- Further support for the Shansi provenance came in 1965, when a bronze quadruped with identical ornamentation and of approximately the same size as the Freer example was unearthed in tomb 126, at Fen-shui-ling, Ch'ang-chih, Shansi Province.1982, Thomas Lawton, “Bronze Vessels, Fittings, and Weapons”, in Chinese Art of the Warring States Period, Smithsonian Institution, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 79, column 1:
4
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences The copy history of a piece of data, or the intermediate pieces of data used to compute a final data element, as in a database record or web site (data provenance).
5
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences The execution history of computer processes which were used to compute a final piece of data (process provenance).
6
Of a person Background; history; place of origin.
- Derived terms
- country of provenance, geoprovenance
- Related terms
- provene, provenantial