# provenance
## English
### Etymology

Borrowed from French provenance (“origin”), from Middle French provenant, present participle of provenir (“come forth, arise”), from Latin provenio (“to come forth”).

### Pronunciation

* (UK) IPA: /ˈpɹɒ.və.nəns/, /ˈpɹɒ.vəˌnɒns/
* Audio (Southern England):(file)
* (US) IPA: /ˈpɹɑ.və.nəns/, /ˈpɹoʊ.və.nɑns/

### Noun

provenance (countable and uncountable, plural provenances)
* Place or source of origin.
    Many supermarkets display the provenance of their food products.
** 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: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.
* (archaeology) The place and time of origin of some artifact or other object. See Usage notes below.
    This spear is of Viking provenance.
** 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: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.
* (art) The history of ownership of a work of art.
    The picture is of royal provenance.
* (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).
* (computing) The execution history of computer processes which were used to compute a final piece of data (process provenance).
* (of a person) Background; history; place of origin.
    Synonym: ancestry

#### Usage notes

* The term provenience in archaeology has largely replaced provenance because provenience is restricted to in situ location at the date of archaeological discovery rather than the "origin-to-present" chain of custody details of proper provenance as is customarily used by historians, museums, and commercial entities.

#### Derived terms

* country of provenance

#### Related terms

* provenantial

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### Verb

provenance (third-person singular simple present provenances, present participle provenancing, simple past and past participle provenanced)
* To establish the provenance of something

#### Translations
## French
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /pʁɔv.nɑ̃s/
* Audio:(file)
* Rhymes: -ɑ̃s

### Noun

provenance f (plural provenances)
* provenance, origin
    La violence continue en provenance de Homs, l’épicentre de contestation.Violence continues in Homs, the epicentre of the protests.

#### Related terms

* provenir

### Further reading

* “provenance”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.