Configuration shortened to its working name — the declared choices a system reads before it acts. A config is a promise about behavior, written down where hands can find it.
Latin configurare (to shape after a pattern), from com- (together) + figurare (to form, shape), from figura (form, shape); clipped in modern usage to config, the declared shape a system is set to before it runs.
Latin figura is a shape given in advance of the thing it will govern — a config is that shaping, kept apart from the system so the shape can change without remaking what it shapes. What a system becomes on any run is decided beforehand, in a file that outlives the run itself.