Environment shortened to its working name — the file and the surroundings a program reads its circumstances from.
Old French environner (to encircle), en- plus viron (a circuit), from virer (to turn); env is the modern clipping for the surroundings a program reads its circumstances from.
Environment shortened to its working name. What a program reads from its env are the surroundings it was given, not the facts it figured out on its own.