schedule [LME] An early schedule was a ‘scroll, explanatory note, appendix’. It comes via Old French from late Latin schedula ‘slip of paper’ from Greek skhedē ‘papyrus leaf’. The sense ‘timetable’ is found from the mid 19th century in US usage. The British pronounce the word with an initial ‘sh’ sound but Americans with a ‘sk’. This prompted Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) to say to the British actor Herbert Marshall who had annoyed her by repeated references to his busy ‘shedule’ ‘I think you’re full of skit’.