Other forms: plots, plotting, plotted
The plot is what happens in a story: who does what, and what it leads to. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back, that shape is the plot, not the words on the page.
The same word is a secret plan to do harm, which is why history has the Gunpowder Plot and the news has a plot to overthrow the government; as a verb, plotting is what conspirators do in back rooms. A plot is also a small piece of marked-out ground: a vegetable plot, a building plot, a family plot in a cemetery. Scientists plot points on a graph, and sailors plot a course across open water. When a situation gets more complicated and more interesting, English says the plot thickens. Keep it apart from plan: a plan is any intention, while a plot is either the events of a story or something secret and close to criminal.
1nounplotThe events of a story and the way they connect.
“The film is beautiful to look at, but the plot makes very little sense.”
synonyms: storyline, narrative
2nounconspiracyA secret plan to do something harmful or illegal.
“Police uncovered a plot to steal the paintings during the night.”
synonyms: conspiracy, scheme
3nounsmallA small piece of ground marked out for a particular use.
“They bought a plot on the edge of the village and built a house on it.”
4verbplanTo plan something harmful or illegal in secret.
“The two brothers had been plotting against their uncle for years.”
5verbpointsTo mark points on a graph or a map, or work out a route.
“She plotted the temperature for each month and drew a line through the dots.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Also accepted in games: storyline
Plot starts as dirt. In late Old English a plot was a piece of ground, perhaps from Proto-Germanic *platjaz, "a patch", or from landsplott, "a small portion of ground", re-cut by ear into landes-plot. The marked-out ground became the marked-out shape of a story, and the secret-scheme sense was pushed along by the old word complot.
Proto-Germanic
*plataz
Old English
plot — a plot of ground
Middle English
plot
English, today
plot
Built from
From Middle English plot, plotte, from late Old English plot (“a plot of ground”), of unknown origin. Perhaps from Proto-Germanic plataz, platjaz (“a patch”); or alternatively, perhaps from a rebracketing of landsplott (“small portion, or plot, of ground”) taken as landes-plot (“plot of land”). Compare Middle Low German plet (“patch, strip of cloth, rags”), German Bletz (“rags, bits, strip of land”), and possibly Gothic 𐍀𐌻𐌰𐍄 (“a patch, rags”). See also plat. See also complot for an influence and reinforcement of secret plan. attractive physical attributes is a a back-formation from for the plot.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA