portfolio
Pluralportfolios
- 1The collection of investments and other assets held by an investor.
Her investment portfolio included real estate, equities, and government bonds.
Diversified portfolios tend to weather market downturns better than concentrated ones.
Similarholdings, investments
Note
Finance judges holdings as a single whole. A portfolio is diversified or concentrated as a unit, and its performance is the sum of everything in it. Investment portfolio is the standard collocation. In private equity the word also covers the companies a firm has bought. The Economist (2013) sets "operational improvement" in such a portfolio against mere clever financial ploys.
- 2A collection of work samples, especially the works of an artist or photographer.
The young illustrator's portfolio impressed the gallery owner.
He spent the weekend assembling a portfolio of his architectural drawings.
Similarcollection
Note
Here the name of the container passes to what it contains. The word grew out of the carrying case, and it now means the work itself: the drawings, photographs or designs that represent what a person can do. You assemble, build or show a portfolio, and portfolio of is the usual construction when you name the kind of work.
- 3A flat, portable case designed to hold loose sheets such as drawings, maps, photographs, and other papers.
The artist tucked the loose sketches into a leather portfolio.
Architects once carried their blueprints in oversized portfolios.
Note
The literal sense, and the one the word's parts spell out. Italian portafoglio joins Latin portāre, "to carry", and folium, "sheet", so the word names a carrier of sheets. French portefeuille, "folder, wallet", is built the same way. In L. E. Landon's Ethel Churchill (1837) the case is embroidered and perfumed, and it holds a letter rather than drawings.
- 4A collection of assets, or more broadly any group of things regarded as investments or assets, and rarely even liabilities.
The university manages a portfolio of patents and research projects.
Critics argued the agency's portfolio of obligations had grown into a list of liabilities.
Similarcollection
Note
The investor's way of thinking travels with the word into any field. Borrowed from an investor's holdings, it implies that each item carries value. Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift (1976) contrasts thoughts with "a cultural portfolio of stocks and bonds". A Bit of Fry and Laurie has a father propose a mixed portfolio of religions for his child. More rarely the collection holds burdens, such as obligations added to a welfare state's portfolio.
- 5
- 6The office and duties held by a cabinet minister, or by anyone else in charge of a government department.
The prime minister handed her the finance portfolio.
He held the defense portfolio for nearly a decade.
Similarministry
Note
Politics treats a minister's brief as something held in the hand. A portfolio is given, handed over, held or lost, and it is usually named by its field: the finance portfolio, the defense portfolio. Ministry is the nearest synonym. A cabinet member who has no particular department is said to serve without portfolio.
Practice
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Origin
From Italian portafoglio, related to French portefeuille ("folder, wallet"), from Latin portāre ("to carry") and folium ("sheet"). The sense of a "collection of responsibilities" arose by extension in the 1930s.