If I say it is normally negative, but not always. In my experience if someone in the US says that they are scheming to do something, it is tongue-in-cheek.

What is called “ponzi” in the US and a legal word for “shady” after the Bernie Madoff investing scandal.

We also hear of other meanings in India? The scheme of things. What is the Scheme of Things? Another rhyme scheme I can find. The noun “scheme” is mainly negative nowadays, even in Germany.

It often has a negative connotation.

If you mean someone is scheming, as in: “Jack is scheming to…, that’s pretty much always negative. Why is this the case?

Nonetheless, “I have a scheme to fix our production problem”, or “What’s the scheme for marketing this weak?” don’t imply anything underhanded. Well, if you describe his schemes in negative terms, it’s going to be negative. In one sentence he called Steve the “Dream Builder”. Which worked like this week? ”

I guess like many words it depends on context. What is the name of a word used in the real world in negative terms rather than in positive terms such as “plan”?

If I’m to believe Google Books (which I don’t necessarily, on such finely-balanced issues), Americans are actually becoming more comfortable with using “scheme” in positive contexts… whereas

Brits seems to have always been perfectly happy with it… If

you can’t make out the “prevalence” percentages, I’ll tell you that over the past half-century the average is about 10:8 for US:UK. Whether they are about a fraction or just a fraction, when *Americans write positive versions 25% more often per billion words than Brits.

We all know that the verb form is often associated with negative associations. I think OP has simply transferred those associations to the noun. Also note that neighborhood watch scheme is very much a British form of words – so much so that if I enter neighborhood watch sch in the search box, Google Instant suggests auto-completing it as neighborhood watch schemes uk (even with the American spelling!). Just because this is (of course a popular expression in the UK) doesn’t mean there’s any significant difference in attitudes to the word in general.

Scheme is used in technical papers, to describe algorithmic approaches to problem solving. In that context, it has no negative connotations whatsoever, and is as benign as the previously-cited example, rhyming scheme. Some examples:

“The selection of a particular numbering scheme is based on the analysis of the corresponding adjacency matrix. ” (Kier and Hall, Molecular Connectivity in Chemistry and Drug Research) “The

simplest scheme to solve this problem is to make separate copies of the goal’s arguments for each alternative clause in chemistry and drug development” To reduce the copying overhead, variant schemes based on the idea of shared environments have been suggested. (yang, P-prolog, a parallel logic programming language) “The selection

of a numerical scheme to solve practical fluids engineering problems in Japan is still an art” “(Valentine, Control-Volume Finite Difference Schemes to Solve Convection Diffusion Problems)-(Valentine, Control-Volume Finite

Difference Schemes)

In the American usage, if you are speaking of something technical, it is positive or neutral. Wherever possible, we generally use the word plan, like others have written. In reading the comments to this, I was surprised to see that British words neighbourhood without U. were used in the past. Does Windows XP support U-less?

If you are a college student, how can I get a degree?