Other forms: ports
A port is a town or harbour where ships load and unload. A fishing port, the port of Dover, come into port.
Computing borrowed the word for a socket a cable plugs into — a USB port — and again for a numbered channel a network service listens on, which is why port 80 means something to anybody who has configured a server. Two further senses share the spelling: port is the left side of a ship facing forward, opposite starboard, and port is a strong sweet fortified wine from Portugal. Four senses, and only the wine has nothing to do with harbours.
1nounportA socket that a cable plugs into.
“There is a spare port on the back of the machine.”
2nounharbourA harbour town where ships load and unload.
“The ferry leaves the port at seven.”
3nounleftThe left side of a ship or aircraft, facing forward.
“Land was sighted off the port bow.”
4nounstrongA strong sweet fortified wine.
“A glass of port after dinner.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
port is an opening or harbour.
Latin portus meant a harbour, from a root meaning a crossing or passage — the same root as ford. The wine is named after Oporto, the harbour it was shipped from, so even that sense comes back to a port in the end.
Old English
port
English, today
port
From Old English port. From Old English port, borrowed from Latin portus (“port, harbour”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European pértus (“crossing”) (and thus a distant doublet of a doublet of ford). The directional sense, attested since at least the 1500s, derives from ancient vessels with the steering oar on the right (see etymology of starboard), which therefore had to moor with their left sides facing the dock or wharf. a doublet of fjard and fjord and firth and ford and Portus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA