There are many English words built from the Latin word portare, which meant, “to carry.”  Some of these words, like the word portage, came more or less directly from the Latin.  Others came into English indirectly from Latin, via French (such as portmanteau) or Italian or even Portuguese (port wine is a strong, seasoned wine that was originally made in Porto, Portugal—a Portuguese port—how “portly” can one get).

To say someone is portly is to say that they are overweight, but not fat, and that they carry the extra weight well.  It is, in short, a way of referring to a person’s excess weight in a positive way (although its overuse for this has made the word a touch humorous).

The word port has dozens of meanings in English.  As a noun, it is a type of wine (already mentioned), a place where goods are loaded and offloaded from ships, an opening (usually circular) in a ship where one can look outside, and a general catch-all word for a place where one enters or leaves something.  As a verb it is a general word for “to carry” something.

Portage refers to money you have to pay if you want to ship something.  Note the verb to ship, which refers to sending something, maybe actually by ship but also maybe by air or by truck.  To ship means to send something via a third party while to port implies carrying it oneself.  There is also a porter, someone whose job it is to carry things (such as luggage) for other people.

Import and export are the backbone of the world economy, and steadily getting more so.  It makes no sense for a country to insist in making everything domestically.  If certain things are available if one imports them more cheaply than one could make them at home, then one should import them and keep domestic resources free for other activity.

A portmanteau is a large suitcase; a portfolio is more like a briefcase used to carry important documents.  The word portmanteau has also come to mean what it is—that is to say the word portmanteau is a combination of two French words glued together—port—“to carry,” and manteau—“suitcase.”   A “portmanteau word” then, is a word that has been formed by gluing two shorter words together—such as “automobile” or “housewife.”

The word portfolio has come to have a much broader meaning, and today is used to refer to the documents inside a portfolio—especially stock certificates.  One’s portfolio is the collection of investments one has.

In the past, when one bought shares of a public company, one would receive a certificate that documented one’s ownership.  Nowadays this is more likely to be recorded electronically, avoiding the expense and bother of dealing with certificates.  Nevertheless, the mass of one’s investments is still referred to as one’s portfolio.

Hence, we have the expression, “a diversified portfolio,” which would mean a portfolio of stocks of diverse companies.  It is generally considered desirable to have a collection of stocks in different kinds of company—the proverb is, “don’t keep all your eggs in one basket.”

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