sketch

Meanings

Verb

• To make a brief, basic drawing.
• To describe briefly and with very few details.

Noun

• A rapidly executed freehand drawing that is not intended as a finished work, often consisting of a multitude of overlapping lines.
• A rough design, plan, or draft, as a rough draft of a book.
• A brief description of a person or account of an incident; a general presentation or outline.
• A brief, light, or unfinished dramatic, musical, or literary work or idea; especially a short, often humorous or satirical scene or play, frequently as part of a revue or variety show.
• An amusing person.
• A lookout; vigilant watch for something.
• A humorous newspaper article summarizing political events, making heavy use of metaphor, paraphrase and caricature.
• A formal specification of a mathematical structure or a data type described in terms of a graph and diagrams (and cones (and cocones)) on it. It can be implemented by means of “models”, which are functors which are graph homomorphisms from the formal specification to categories such that the diagrams become commutative, the cones become limiting (i.e., products), the cocones become colimiting (i.e., sums).

Adjective

• Sketchy, shady, questionable.

Origin

• From Dutch schets, from Italian schizzo, from Latin schedium, from Ancient Greek σχέδιος ("made suddenly, off-hand"), from σχεδόν, from ἔχω. Compare scheme.