Etymology Explorer › English

Where does “FORTRAN” come from?

Fortran is a programming language whose name derives from English formula translation, a descriptive coinage from the 1950s referring to its purpose of translating mathematical formulas into machine code.

Ancestry of “FORTRAN”, step by step

StepLanguageWordMeaning
1EnglishFORTRAN—

Words derived from “FORTRAN”

  • Fortranlike
Every word from English FORTRAN →