Origins
The word 'optimization' entered English in the 1870s as a nominal derivative of 'optimize' (1857), itself formed from Latin 'optimus' (best) + the verbal suffix '-ize.' The Latin adjective 'optimus' serves as the irregular superlative of 'bonus' (good); its formation is not from the stem of 'bonus' but from an independent stem *op-, which appears in several Latin words denoting wealth, power, and abundance: 'ops' (power, wealth, resources; personified as the goddess Ops), 'opes' (riches, resources), 'opulentus' (wealthy, opulent), and 'opus' (work, a produced thing). The underlying PIE root is most likely *h₃ep- (to work, to produce in abundance), which also yielded Sanskrit 'ápas' (work, action).
The philosophical concept of 'the optimum' owes much to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who argued in his 'Théodicée' (1710) that God had created 'the best of all possible worlds' — 'le meilleur des mondes possibles.' From this theological context, 'optimism' entered French and then English (1759), acquiring its modern general sense of hopeful expectation. Voltaire's satire 'Candide' (1759) mocked Leibnizian optimism through the character of Dr. Pangloss, who maintained that everything was for the best despite mounting catastrophes.
The technical sense of 'optimization' — finding the best solution from a set of feasible alternatives — developed in mathematics and engineering during the 19th and 20th centuries. Linear programming, developed by George Dantzig in the 1940s, and the broader field of operations research gave 'optimization' its precise mathematical meaning: minimizing or maximizing an objective function subject to constraints. From mathematics, the word migrated to computer science (code optimization, search engine optimization), business management (process optimization, supply chain optimization), and everyday usage (optimizing one's schedule).
Proto-Indo-European Roots
The Latin word family around *op- is worth noting for its coherence. 'Opus' (a work, especially a musical or artistic production), 'opera' (originally the plural of 'opus,' then an Italian art form), 'operate' (to work, to function), 'opulent' (rich in productive resources), and 'optimum' (the best, the most productive outcome) all trace to the same concept of productive work and its fruits. The connection suggests that Roman culture equated excellence ('optimus') with productive capacity — a value judgment that persists in the modern use of 'optimization' to mean the maximization of output or efficiency.
In contemporary business and technology discourse, 'optimization' has become one of the most frequently used abstract nouns, applied to everything from website performance to personal productivity. Its semantic range has expanded from the mathematical sense of finding a provable best solution to a looser sense of 'improving' or 'making more efficient,' a broadening that sometimes draws criticism from mathematicians and engineers who reserve the term for problems with formally defined optima.