HTML is an application of ISO 8879:1986 -- Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). SGML is a system for defining structured document types and markup languages to represent instances of those document types[SGML]. The public text -- DTD and SGML declaration -- of the HTML document type definition are provided in 9, "HTML Public Text".
The term "HTML" refers to both the document type defined here and the markup language for representing instances of this document type.