scheme

Less common meanings

5. 5
   diagramnouncountable

   A chart or diagram that represents a system or an object.

   Scheme 2 shows each step of the reaction, from the starting material to the final product.

   In the journal article, the second scheme lays out every step by which the starting compound is turned into the finished drug.

   Similardiagram, chart, schematic

   Note

   Here a scheme is something drawn rather than devised: Robert South, in a sermon preached at Westminster Abbey in 1694, set an exact scheme of Constantinople beside a map of France. Its near synonyms are schematic and plot, and plot leads the same double life as scheme itself, a drawn plan in one sense and a secret one in the conspiratorial meaning. Source

   Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 2 facts

   • Robert South preached the sermon at Westminster Abbey in 1694. ccel.org
   • South's sermon juxtaposes an exact scheme of Constantinople with a map of France as examples of drawn representations. ccel.org
6. 6
   pension plannounUKcountable

   A pension plan: an arrangement, often run by an employer or the state, that collects contributions and pays pensions to its members.

   Staff who leave the firm keep the rights they have built up in its pension scheme.

   The trustees run the scheme on behalf of its members and pay their pensions when they retire.

   UsageUsually pension scheme: members join, pay into and later draw a pension from it. Americans say pension plan.

   Similarplan

   Note

   British pensions language uses the word for the collective arrangement rather than any one person's account: it takes in contributions and pays out pensions, and many members belong to it at once.

7. 7
   council housingnoundialectalScotlandUKcountable

   A council housing estate, a neighborhood of homes that the local council built to rent out.

   She grew up in a scheme on the edge of Glasgow and still goes back to see her gran.

   The bus only comes out to the scheme twice an hour after six.

   UsagePeople live in the scheme or out in the scheme. In formal writing, council estate says the same.

   Similarestate, project

   Note

   Everyday speech, chiefly Scottish, is where this sense lives, rather than official language. People live in the scheme or out in the scheme: James Kelman's Kieron Smith, Boy (2008) has shops putting their prices up because it was out in the scheme, and Irvine Welsh uses the plural for all such estates together, the kids in the schemes.

8. 8
   nounrhetoric

   In rhetoric, an artful departure from the usual order or arrangement of words.

   The speech ends with chiasmus, a scheme in which the key words of one phrase come back in reverse order in the next.

   Alongside metaphor and irony, the preacher leaned on one scheme above all: opening every clause with the same word.

   Note

   Rhetoric uses the word for a figure of form, and its history shows why: it came through Medieval Latin schēma, "figure, form", from Greek skhêma, "form, shape". Such a scheme shapes the sentence itself, opening every clause with the same word or holding the verb back to the end. It works on word order rather than meaning, which is what sets it apart from metaphor or irony. Source

   Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 4 facts

   • The word came through Medieval Latin schēma, meaning 'figure, form', from Greek skhêma, meaning 'form, shape'. en.wiktionary.org
   • Repeating the same word at the beginning of successive clauses is a rhetorical scheme, anaphora. rhetoric.byu.edu
   • Moving a verb to the end can constitute a rhetorical scheme through altered word order. rhetoric.byu.edu
   • Schemes concern verbal arrangement, whereas tropes such as metaphor and irony concern meaning. web.stanford.edu
9. 9
   noun

   The part of a uniform resource identifier (URI), such as http or news, that indicates the protocol or other purpose of the address.
10. 10
    noun

    In astrology, a representation of the aspects of the celestial bodies at a given moment or event.

    a blue case, from which was drawn a scheme of nativity

    1815, [Walter Scott], Guy Mannering
11. 11
    noun

    A structure generalizing algebraic varieties, for example by allowing multiplicities and definition over any commutative ring; formally, a locally ringed space covered by open sets each isomorphic to a commutative ring's spectrum.