provenance

Meanings

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

1. To establish the provenance of something

Etymology

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