A systematic plan of future action.
"The mayor unveiled a new economic scheme to attract more businesses to the downtown district."
In plain English: A scheme is a secret plan to do something clever or dishonest, often to trick people or get an advantage.
"The new color scheme for the living room looks very modern."
devise a system or form a scheme for
"The marketing team spent weeks devising a new loyalty scheme to reward their most frequent customers."
To plot, or contrive a plan.
"The two friends hatched a scheme to trick their boss into giving them both a day off early."
In plain English: To scheme means to secretly plan something dishonest or tricky to get what you want.
"He is trying to scheme his way into getting a better job without doing any extra work."
Usage: Use this verb when describing someone secretly plotting to achieve something, often with deceptive intent. It differs from neutral planning by implying that the scheme is calculated and potentially fraudulent.
A programming language, one of the two major dialects of Lisp.
"The developer chose Scheme over Common Lisp for its minimalistic syntax and strong support for functional programming features."
The word scheme entered English in the late Middle Ages from Medieval Latin schēma, which originally meant "figure" or "form." This term ultimately traces back to Ancient Greek, where it referred to a shape held by someone.