American
[sawrs kohd] / ˈsɔrs ˌkoʊd /
noun
Computers.
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program instructions written in a programming language that is readable by humans and that must be converted to machine language before being executed.
source code British
noun
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computing the original form of a computer program before it is converted into a machine-readable code
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
source code Scientific
/ sôrs /
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Code written by a programmer in a high-level language and readable by people but not computers. Source code must be converted to object code or machine language by a compiler before a computer can read or execute the program.
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source code
Critical infrastructure and application deployment should be limited to licensed, supported and proprietary source code systems to reduce the security risks.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 22, 2026
Last November, Google’s Threat Intelligence Group published a report showing that bad actors are deploying AI-enhanced malware with the capability to rewrite its source code midexecution to avoid antivirus software.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 18, 2026
Builders of today’s frontier AIs are desperate to inject that kind of specialized knowledge into their models, says Himanshu Dubey, an AI researcher based in Bengaluru, India, who has analyzed the leaked Anthropic source code.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
The model is an example of proprietary AI, meaning its architecture, source code, and training data are concealed from the public by developers.
From Barron's ● Apr. 8, 2026
And he would also have had access to the planet’s source code, if he’d wanted to hide something here.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.