Scheme

How to spell scheme

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce scheme

What does scheme mean?

1. nounAn organised plan, system, or arrangement for achieving something, sometimes with a hint of cunning or deceit.

Scheme in a sentence

• It was a clever scheme.

• The new scheme launches in spring.

Where does scheme come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek skhema, meaning 'form', 'shape', or 'figure', which itself derives from the verb ekhein 'to have' or 'to hold' (in the sense of holding a particular state or posture). Latin borrowed it as schema for a figure or rhetorical device, and English picked it up in the sixteenth century, at first meaning a diagram or a figure of speech. From there the sense widened to a systematic plan or arrangement, and by the eighteenth century it had also acquired the shadier flavour of a cunning or underhand plot. The tricky 'sch' opening and the silent 'e' both survive from the Greek-via-Latin spelling, and the same skhema root sits inside 'schematic' and the educational term 'schema'.

How the word is built

• schem- (from Greek skhema: form, shape, plan)
• -e (silent English ending)