Sketches

How to spell sketches

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sketches

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sketches mean?

1. nounRough, quickly made drawings or outlines.
2. nounShort, self-contained comic performances or scenes.
3. verbDraws or outlines something roughly and quickly.

Sketches in a sentence

• noun

  The architect pinned several rough sketches to the studio wall.

• noun

  The late-night show opened with two political sketches.

• verb

  Whenever she travels, she sketches the buildings she sees.

• noun

  Her notebook was full of pencil sketches of the harbour.

• noun

  The troupe rehearsed their new sketches before the live taping.

• verb

  He often sketches a quick plan before starting the real design.

Where does sketches come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The word comes ultimately from the Greek skhedios, meaning 'done offhand' or 'improvised', which captured the idea of something made quickly and without elaborate preparation. That sense passed into Latin as schedium, an extemporaneous piece, and then into Italian as schizzo, a quick splash or rough outline drawn by an artist. Dutch borrowed it as schets, and English took the word from Dutch in the middle of the 1600s, when Dutch painting was hugely influential across Europe. The original idea of speed and roughness survives in every modern use, whether a quick pencil drawing or a short comic scene. The plural simply adds -es because the singular ends in the -ch sound, which is the small spelling point worth remembering.

How the word is built

• sketch (root: a rough drawing)
• -es (plural noun / third-person verb ending)