Other forms: citations
A citation is a formal pointer to the source an idea or quotation came from. Include a citation, a citation index, cite your sources.
Academic writing requires them so that any reader can check the claim, and citation styles — Harvard, APA, Chicago, Vancouver — differ in punctuation rather than in purpose. Citation count is used, controversially, to measure a researcher's influence. In American usage a citation is also a traffic ticket, and a military citation is a formal mention for bravery. Note cite, site and sight, which are three different words.
1nouncitationA formal pointer to the source of an idea or quotation.
“The claim has no citation and has been repeated for forty years.”
synonyms: reference
2nounmentionA formal mention for bravery.
“He received a citation and never spoke about it.”
citation is a pointer to a source.
Also accepted in games: reference
Latin citatio comes from citare, to summon or call — the same verb behind excite, recite and incite. A citation was a summons to court before it was a summons to a source.
Proto-Indo-European
*keyh₂-
Latin
citatio
Old French
citation
Middle English
citacioun
English, today
citation
From Middle English citacioun, from Old French citation, from Latin citatio. by surface analysis, cite + -ation.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA