Databases

The list opens on lo schema del database, and the noun in it is one English happens to own twice. Greek skhēma meant shape or figure; Latin took it in unaltered as schema; and from that single Latin word English helped itself on two separate occasions, several centuries apart. The later borrowing kept the foreign spelling and stayed in technical hands: « schema », plural « schemata », the structure a specialist draws, which is the one in this list. The earlier one was worn down into « scheme » and left the drawing behind altogether, ending up on plans and arrangements, where it is now the commoner of the two by a long way. Italian never doubled the word, and so never divided the work. Lo schema holds every drawn sense at once — lo schema elettrico, lo schema di un romanzo, lo schema di gioco of a football side — and uscire dagli schemi is to get out of the fixed pattern. What it will not do is stand in for the other half. A plan in Italian is il piano, and anybody who writes lo schema pensionistico has drawn a diagram of a pension.