plot#

plot n

1 *plan, design, scheme, project

Analogous words: *chart, map, graph

2 Plot, intrigue, machination, conspiracy, cabal are comparable when they mean a secret plan devised to entrap or ensnare others.

Plot implies careful planning of details and usually an intent to accomplish an evil, mischievous, or treacherous end; the action may involve one or more devisers and a person, a group, a class, or a people as the victim

{

there is a plot against my life, my crown— Shak.

}

{

the great Jesuit plot for the destruction of Protestant England— Crothers

}

{

the conspirators roped into their scheme a whole network of the magnates. Nevers joined in the plot— Belloc

}

Intrigue implies more complicated scheming or maneuvering than plot and often the use of petty underhand methods in an atmosphere of duplicity; it more often implies an attempt to gain one's own ends through clandestine means (as in politics, in business, or in love) than (as plot frequently implies) an attempt to destroy, to betray, or to usurp power

{

Mr. Swift hath finely described that passion for intrigue, that love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to weak people, hangers-on of weak courts— Thackeray

}

{

the party politicians forgot their good resolutions, and reverted to their familiar intrigues—H. G. Wells

}

{

they had all stooped to folly and . . . here they were, alive, tanned, laughing, and like as not in some new intrigue with a waiter or a musician— Wouk

}

Machination, usually in the plural, imputes hostility or treachery to the makers; often, also, it suggests craftiness in devising or contriving annoyances, injuries, or evils. If these ideas are to be connoted, it may be applied to a plot, an intrigue, or any of the secret plans named by the words in this group

{

tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy— Hawthorne

}

{

the devilish machinations of an enchanter masquerading as a pious hermit— Lowes

}

Conspiracy differs from plot chiefly in implying a combination of persons or groups as the devisers and agents and in being applied chiefly to a plot that involves treason or great treachery

{

these people he has been taking for granted are all part of an insidious conspiracy to undermine the world as he knows it— Edmund Wilson

}

{

the conviction that World War I had been a crooked conspiracy of armament-manufacturers— A. J. P. Taylor

}

In technical legal use the word implies the doing of an unlawful act or the use of unlawful means in accomplishing a lawful end

{

monopoly ... is conspiracy in restraint of trade, including under the term conspiracy all contracts and combinations entered into for the purpose of restraining trade— The Amer. Individual Enterprise System

}

{

the company brought suit against the strike leaders, charging them with conspiracy to ruin the business— Amer. Guide Series: Conn.

}

Cabal applies usually to an intrigue in which a group combines to accomplish some end favorable to it but injurious or disastrous to the person or group, often, specifically, the government, affected

{

the cabal against Washington found supporters exclusively in the north— Bancroft

}

{

the innate character of the cabal and its purposes roused resentments and antagonisms in Congress which compelled its adherents to abandon the move . . . and ... the scheme collapsed— Fitzpatrick

}

Analogous words: contrivance, *device, contraption: maneuver, stratagem, *trick, ruse, artifice

3 sketch, outline, diagram, delineation, draft, tracing, blueprint (see under SKETCH vb)

plot vb

1 plan, design, scheme, project (see under PLAN n)

Analogous words: fashion, fabricate, forge, form, shape, *make

2 *sketch, outline, diagram, delineate, draft, trace, blueprint

Analogous words: create, *invent: chart, map, graph (see under CHART n)