Source

Research

Any material information is drawn from — classified as primary, secondary, or tertiary, and evaluated for reliability.

Sources

1. Merriam-Webster — source merriam-webster.com accessed 23 September 2026

Merriam-Webster: “a generative force : cause”; “a point of origin or procurement : beginning”, including one who supplies information; “the point of origin of a stream of water : fountainhead”; and, directly relevant here, a firsthand document or primary reference work. From Latin surgere, to rise, through Anglo-French surdre; first recorded in the fourteenth century. The water metaphor is the original and still the best test of what this lexicon calls a primary source: how far upstream is it?

Merriam-Webster is cited as the dictionary of record: where an entry defines a word rather than a position, a dictionary is the primary source for it. The research usage above is this lexicon’s own.

Related terms

• Abbreviation
• Abstract
• Abstraction
• Academic Database
• Analysis
• Annotation

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).