Provenance

Quick meaning: Provenance is a noun meaning Place or source of origin.

Meaning

Place or source of origin.

More Meanings

1. (archaeology) The place and time of origin of some artifact or other object. See Usage notes below.
2. (art) The history of ownership of a work of art.
3. (computing) The execution history of computer processes which were used to compute a final piece of data (process provenance).
4. (of a person) Background; history; place of origin.
5. To establish the provenance of something
6. (computing) 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).

Example Sentences

This spear is of Viking provenance.

The picture is of royal provenance.

Many supermarkets display the provenance of their food products.

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.

Word Forms

• provenances
• provenancing
• provenanced

Synonyms for provenance

Depending on context, synonyms include ancestry, cradle, birthplace.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include birthplace, cradle, originator, original, appropriateness, source.

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