Font, Fount, Fountain: Origins, Forms, Histories of Words Meaning River, Lake

The natural features of a region are its topography. The word comes from Greek topos ("place").

Rivers, lakes, and related freshwater bodies are among the most important topographic features of an area. Many words relating to freshwater features have little-known meanings and/or colorful etymologies.

In the current alphabetic series of such terms, here are the origins, forms, and histories of font, fount, and fountain. The dates of forms and meanings come from the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

In common usage today, the water-related words font, fount, and fountain are synonymous: a spring of water issuing from the earth. Each word, however, has a different history.

Font
Modern English font goes all the way back to Old English font (before 12th century), from Late Latin font-, a combining form of Late Latin fons, from Latin fons ("spring, fountain, source").

The original meaning of font is a receptacle for baptismal water (before 12th century), later also a receptacle for holy water (16th century). During the 14th to the 17th centuries, the spelling fount was also used in this sense.

The use of font to denote a spring of water dates from the early 17th century (1611).

Fount
The word fount for a spring of water entered English in the late 16th century from Middle French font, from Latin font-, a combining form of fons ("spring, fountain, source").

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this spelling originated by analogy with the earlier words mount and mountain (both from Latin mont-, mons, "mountain"). One of the earliest users of fount for a spring of water was Shakespeare (Lucrece, 1593).

Fountain
Modern English fountain comes from Middle English fountain (15th century), from earlier Middle English fontayne (15th century) and fountayne (14th century), from Middle French fontaine, from Late Latin and Latin fontana, from the feminine of Latin fontanus ("of a spring"), from font-, fons ("spring, fountain, source").

The earliest recorded meaning for fountain is figurative: the source from which something proceeds or is supplied (late 14th century).

Fountain meaning a spring of water dates from the middle of the 15th century (c. 1450). An artificial jet or stream of water made to spout like a natural spring is also termed a fountain (early 16th century).

A spring that is specifically referred to as the source of a stream is called a fountainhead (1585).
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Encyclopaedia Britannica Ready Reference 2004. CD-ROM. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2006.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2007.

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1989.