It's Merriam-Webster's word of the day for July 11th.

Today's word is today's word is fountainhead spelled as one word, F-O-U-N-H-E-A-N-H-E-A-D, Fountainhead is a noun.

It's a word usually encountered in literary contexts that refers to the origin

or source of something. Here's the word used in The New Yorker by Jeannie Suk Gerson.

In Marbury in 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall proclaimed,

it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department

to say what the law is.

There, the Supreme Court, for the first time, declared an act of Congress unconstitutional

and entirely void, because the Court implied that its own authority to interpret the Constitution is

superior to that of the other branches, the case is the fountainhead of judicial supremacy.

In Walden, widely considered Henry David Thoreau's masterwork, the poet philosopher extoll

one major, nay transcendent, perk, of being an early bird, morning air, if men will not drink perk of men sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their

subscription ticket to morning time in this world."

Thoreau was using Fountainhead in its figurative sense, referring to morning as the origin of the day to follow,

while also paying homage to its literal meaning the source of a stream,

the earliest sense of fountain being a natural spring. As someone who spent two years living

writing and meditating in a cabin, Thoreau was nothing after all, if not thorough.

With your word of the day I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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