Well, OK, I mean that seems the most likely to me too. But I was
really wondering if there's any records to support that, e.g. if an
early C manual said something like "a struct (or structure) is...", or
if people who were around in the early days remember how the name came
about.
<
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/primevalC.html>, written by
Dennis Ritchie:
"prestruct-c" is a copy of the compiler just before I started
changing it to use structures itself.
...
The earlier compiler does not know about structures at all: the
string "struct" does not appear anywhere. The second tape has a
compiler that does implement structures in a way that begins to
approach their current meaning. Their declaration syntax seems to
use () instead of {}, but . and -> for specifying members of a
structure itself and members of a pointed-to structure are both
there.
On the other hand, a Google search for the phrase "single type
representing useful compound types" gets exactly zero hits, and a
Google Groups search finds only this thread.
I remember one of the regulars here (I don't remember who it was)
coining a "backronym" for the "struct" keyword. His intent, I think,
was not to seriously suggest that the word "struct" is an acronym, but
to emphasize that a struct, not a typedef, is the way to create a new
type. I suspect the author would be surprised to see his invented
derivation being taken seriously.