Word.ws English Dictionary

scheme

/skiːm/

scheme noun: an artful deviation from the ordinary arrangement of words.

Noun

scheme (plural schemes)

  1. (obsolete, rhetoric) An artful deviation from the ordinary arrangement of words.
  2. A representation of the aspects of the celestial bodies for any moment or at a given event.
    • a blue case, from which was drawn a scheme of nativity1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown...
  3. A systematic plan of future action.
    • The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.c. 1713, Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
    • Originally the opening had doubtless marked the projection of another road, but the scheme had come to nothing.1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC
  4. A plot or secret, devious plan.
    • Her brain is continually fermenting new schemes.
  5. An orderly combination of related parts.
    • the appearance and outward scheme of things1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC
    • such a scheme of things as shall at once take in time and eternity1706, Francis Atterbury, A Sermon Preach'd in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul; at the Funeral of My. Tho. Bennett
  6. A chart or diagram of a system or object.
    • April 29, 1694, Robert South, A Sermon Preached at Westminster Abbey
      to draw an exact scheme of Constantinople, or a map of France
  7. A mathematical structure that generalizes the notion of an algebraic variety in several ways, such as taking account of multiplicities and allowing “varieties” defined over any commutative ring. Formally, a locally ringed space that admits a covering by open sets, each of which is isomorphic to an affine scheme (i.e. the spectrum of some commutative ring).
  8. (Scotland, UK, colloquial) A council housing estate.
    • It was all too dear. They all just put their prices up because it was out in the scheme.2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin, published 2009, page 101
    • “You can’t really say to the kids in the schemes [Scottish council estates]^([sic]): don’t do drugs, they’ll wreck your life, you’ll never get a job or a house or buy nice things.”2023 July 2, David Barnett, quoting Irvine Welsh, “‘Choose drugs?’ 30 years after he wrote Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh says life is tougher now”, in The Observer, →ISSN
    Synonyms:
    estate, project
  9. (Internet) Part of a uniform resource identifier indicating the protocol or other purpose, such as http: or news:.
  10. (UK, pensions) A portfolio of pension plans with related benefits comprising multiple independent members.

Verb

scheme (third-person singular simple present schemes, present participle scheming, simple past and past participle schemed)

  1. (intransitive) To plot, or contrive a plan; to maneuver.
    • Laura snatches coins from inside a truck to make a telephone call, scrounges shoes and clothes for them at a municipal beach, schemes to get a room key so she and Howie can sleep overnight in the Starlight Motel, steals a Jeepster from a deputy sheriff who's trying to arrest them.1987 November 8, Ron Hansen, “CHILDREN'S BOOKS; DISCOVERING THE OPPOSITE SEX”, in The New York Times
    • The openly ridiculous plot has The Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) scheming to win the Pirate Of The Year competition, even though he’s a terrible pirate, far outclassed by rivals voiced by Jeremy Piven and Salma Hayek.2012 April 26, Tasha Robinson, “Film: Reviews: The Pirates! Band Of Misfits”, in The Onion AV Club
  2. (transitive) To plan; to contrive; to maneuver.
    • He schemed a plot. He made use of the hotel's stationery to write a letter.1908, Bohemian Magazine, volume 15, page 381

Proper noun capitalized: Scheme

Scheme

  1. A programming language, one of the two major dialects of Lisp.

scheme meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

scheme in Hindi

scheme, plan
खेल khel

scheme in Tamil

திட்டம், யோசனை

scheme in Marathi

scheme, trick, or calculated maneuver
खेळ khēḷa
a scheme, plot, trick, or calculated maneuver
डाव ḍāva

scheme in Urdu

scheme, plan
کھیل khel
a scheme, project
تحریک tahrīk
More languagesFewer languages
scheme in Bengali
পরিকল্পনা, পদ্ধতি, ফন্দি, রেখাচিত্র
scheme in Telugu
పథకం pathakaṁ
scheme in Malayalam
പദ്ധതി, ഉപായം, പ്രയോഗം, വഴി
scheme in Punjabi
ਸਕੀਮ
scheme in Gujarati
સ્કીમ
scheme in Odia
ସ୍କିମ୍
scheme in Sanskrit
लग्न lagna, निदर्शन nidarśana
scheme in Assamese
আঁচনি ãsoni
scheme in Arabic
مَكِيدَة makīda
scheme in Malay
skema

Examples of scheme in a sentence

  • Such [rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity.2013 July 20, “Out of the gloom”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845, archived from the original on 12 Mar 2023:
  • arguments […] sufficient to support and demonstrate a whole scheme of moral philosophy1754, Jonathan Edwards, The Freedom of the Will:
  • The Revolution came and changed his whole scheme of life.1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XX, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify...

All 40 example sentences with scheme

Synonyms of scheme

8 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of scheme

Forms of scheme

Noun
pluralschemes
Verb
third-person singular presentschemes
present participlescheming
past participleschemed
pastschemed

Plural of scheme: schemes

Origin of scheme

From late Middle English scheame, from Medieval Latin schēma (“figure, form”), from Ancient Greek σχῆμα (skhêma, “form, shape”), from ἔχω (ékhō, “to hold”). Doublet of schema. Compare sketch.

Words formed from scheme

Phrases with scheme

3 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with scheme

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about scheme

What does scheme mean?
Scheme means an artful deviation from the ordinary arrangement of words.
What is scheme in Hindi?
Scheme in Hindi is खेल (khel). See Scheme meaning in Hindi.
How do you use scheme in a sentence?
Such [rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity.
What part of speech is scheme?
Scheme can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce scheme?
Scheme is pronounced /skiːm/.
What is the plural of scheme?
The plural of scheme is schemes.

Words near scheme in the dictionary

  1. schematochrome
  2. schematochromes
  3. schemats
  4. Schembri
  5. Schembris
  6. scheme
  7. scheme arch
  8. scheme arches
  9. scheme of studies
  10. scheme of things
  11. scheme theory

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scheme (page history and authors); Scheme (page history and authors); खेल (Hindi) (page history and authors); scheme (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); खेळ (Marathi) (page history and authors); تحریک (Urdu) (page history and authors); scheme (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); పథకం (Telugu) (page history and authors); scheme (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); scheme (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); scheme (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); scheme (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); निदर्शन (Sanskrit) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-scheme.ogg.

Cite this entry: “scheme.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scheme. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.