Noun

(en noun)

The beginning of something.

The source of a river, information, goods, etc.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author= Sam Leith

, volume=189, issue=1, page=37, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Where the profound meets the profane , passage=Swearing doesn't just mean what we now understand by "dirty words". It is entwined, in social and linguistic history, with the other sort of swearing: vows and oaths. Consider for a moment the origins of almost any word we have for bad language – "profanity", "curses", "oaths" and "swearing" itself.}}

(mathematics) The point at which the axes of a coordinate system intersect.

(anatomy) The proximal end of attachment of a muscle to a bone that will not be moved by the action of that muscle.

(cartography) An arbitrary point on the earth's surface, chosen as the zero for a system of coordinates.

(in the plural) Ancestry.

Noun

(en noun)

Something invented.

* 1944 November 28, Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe, Meet Me in St. Louis , Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer:

Warren Sheffield is telephoning Rose long distance at half past six. Personally, I wouldn't marry a man who proposed to me over an invention .

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-10-05, volume=409, issue=8856, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= The widening gyre , passage=British inventions have done more to influence the shape of the modern world than those of any other country. Many—football, the steam engine and Worcestershire sauce, to take a random selection—have spread pleasure, goodwill and prosperity. Others—the Maxim gun, the Shrapnel shell and jellied eels—have not.}}

The act of inventing.

* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=September-October, author=(Henry Petroski)

, magazine=(American Scientist), title= The Evolution of Eyeglasses , passage=Digging deeper, the invention of eyeglasses is an elaboration of the more fundamental development of optics technology. The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone,

The capacity to invent.

(music) A small, self-contained composition, particularly those in J.S. Bach’s Two-'' and ''Three-part Inventions .

* 1880 , (George Grove) (editor and entry author), , page 15, Invention:

INVENTION .?A term used by J. S. Bach, and probably by him only, for small pianoforte pieces?—?15 in 2 parts and 15 in 3 parts?—?each developing a single idea, and in some measure answering to the Impromptu of a later day.

(label) The act of discovering or finding; the act of finding out; discovery.