Art & MusicGreek → English
Sketch
/skɛtʃ/noun
A rough quick drawing, or a short comic scene.
The Greek roots
σχέδιος
schédios
offhand, improvised
σχεδόν
schedón
near, close at hand
Literally: “done on the spot”
The story of the word
The road is long. Greek σχέδιος gave Latin schedium, a poem thrown off without preparation; Italian turned that into schizzo for a painter's first rough attempt; Dutch schets carried it to England in the 1660s. The idea holding all of it together is nearness in time, something made on the spot. The comic sketch borrows the drawing metaphor, and the slang sketchy, meaning dubious, is a much later American extension of the same unfinished feeling.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Italian → Dutch → English
- First recorded
- 1660s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
In a sentence
He made a sketch of the roofline on the back of the ticket.
The best sketch in the show lasted ninety seconds.