Re: 'Fortran' is the word an acronym or a portmanteau?

tomcee wrote:
| I've just noticed that the listing in Wiki for Fortran has recently
| been changed to:
|
| "...Fortran (an acronym derived from its original official name..."
|
| My understanding is that the word s a portmanteau and NOT an acronym.
|
|
|| From Wiki:
| A portmanteau (plural: portmanteaus or portmanteaux) is a term in
| linguistics that refers to a word or morpheme that fuses two or more
| grammatical functions. A folk usage of portmanteau refers to a word
| that is formed by combining both sounds and meanings from two or more
| words (e.g. 'animatronics' from 'animation' and 'electronics').

I disagree; IMO, the differences can occasionally be subtle, but
"acronym" is a name given by particular persons for something that
is invented or created, and "portmanteaus" occur relatively
spontaneously (invented by someone, often in jokular context, and
spreading) to describe some new phenomena. If the inventors of
Fortran had initially named it "C2F654.A1" and the word "Fortran"
emerged spontaneously by users few years later, we might call it
a "portmanteau". I don't see, though, how it differs from Radar
or Matlab.

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