Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Schematic
/skiˈmætɪk/noun
A diagram showing the parts of a system and how they connect.
The Greek roots
σχῆμα
skhêma
form, figure, shape
Literally: “having to do with shape”
Follow a root:σχῆμα3 words
The story of the word
σχῆμα is the shape a thing holds, built on the aorist stem of ἔχω, to have or hold, and in Greek it stretched across a dancer's pose, a geometrical figure and a turn of rhetoric. Latin took it as schema, and English got scheme in the sixteenth century meaning a diagram, only later a plot. The engineering sense keeps the honest half: a circuit schematic tells the truth about what connects to what and deliberately lies about where anything sits on the board.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
schemeschemaschematize
In a sentence
He traced the fault with a finger on the schematic before touching a screwdriver.