Portfolio

How to spell portfolio

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce portfolio

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does portfolio mean?

1. nounA flat case or organised collection of work samples used to show a person's skills or experience.
2. nounThe full range of investments held by an individual or organisation.
3. nounThe area of responsibility assigned to a government minister.

Portfolio in a sentence

• The designer brought her portfolio to the interview to show recent projects.

• She diversified her portfolio to spread the risk across several markets.

• She was handed the health portfolio in the latest cabinet reshuffle.

• A strong portfolio matters more than a long list of qualifications in that field.

• The fund manager reviewed every portfolio before the markets opened.

• The new minister took on the transport portfolio with little experience.

Where does portfolio come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This word comes from the Italian portafoglio, a compound that joined portare, meaning 'to carry', with foglio, meaning 'a leaf' or 'a sheet of paper'. The foglio element traces back further to the Latin folium, which literally meant a leaf, the same root that gives us 'foliage' and the bookbinder's term 'folio'. So a portafoglio was originally just a case for carrying loose sheets, and English adopted it in the early 1700s, smoothing the spelling to portfolio. Over time the literal document case lent its name to abstract collections: an artist's body of work, an investor's bundle of holdings, and a government minister's set of responsibilities. The spelling trap lives in the middle, since the single 'l' in -folio and the unstressed vowels tempt writers toward an extra letter or a doubled consonant.

How the word is built

• port- (from Italian portare: to carry)
• folio (from Latin folium: leaf, sheet of paper)