Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Scheme
/skiːm/noun
A plan or organised system, and in British use often a plot.
The Greek roots
σχῆμα
skhêma
form, figure, appearance
Literally: “the shape a thing holds”
Follow a root:σχῆμα3 words
The story of the word
Skhêma is how something looks in a given state, built on ékhein, to hold. English took it in the 1500s for a figure of speech, then for a diagram, especially an astrologer's chart of the heavens. Diagram to plan is a short step; plan to plot took the eighteenth century, and only in Britain, where a housing scheme or a pension scheme is still perfectly respectable. Americans hear the crooked sense and nothing else.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
schemaschematicepoch
In a sentence
The council's recycling scheme collapsed when the depot closed.