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scenario

UK/sɪˈnɑːɹi.əʊ/US/sɪˈnɛəɹioʊ/
nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,248 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: scenarios

A scenario is one way things could turn out. A worst-case scenario, plan for every scenario, a likely scenario.

Planners use several at once on purpose, because the point is to prepare for a range rather than to predict one outcome. The word came from the theatre, where a scenario was the outline of a plot. The plural is scenarios, not scenarii.

Definitions of scenario

  1. 1nounscenarioOne way things could turn out.B2

    “In the best-case scenario, the building will be finished by June.”

scenario is a possibility.

Where it comes from

  1. Italian

    scenario

  2. English, today

    scenario

Borrowed from Italian scenario.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

scenario in the wild

  • An adventure is a playable scenario in a tabletop role-playing game.

    Adventure (role-playing games)

  • A climate change scenario is a hypothetical future based on a "set of key driving forces" behind climate change.

    Climate change scenario

  • Climate change scenarios exist at a national, regional or global scale.

    Climate change scenario

  • Scenario testing is a software testing activity that uses scenarios: hypothetical stories to help the tester work through a complex problem or test system.

    Scenario testing

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.