And now for a word that should be all too familiar to all the writers: plot.
Plot comes from the Old English plot as a noun meaning a plot of land. From that sense, it morphed into map or chart, like you would plot out land. But then there’s the other definitions, which is where things get weird.
Plot in the sense of plan or scheme does come from plot, but it was probably influenced by the word complot, a word so obscure there’s no actual etymology on it even though it’s probably where we get the book plot sense. It comes from the Old French complot, though no one knows where it came from before that. It might be from the word compeloter, but that’s pretty strange considering it means “to roll into a ball”.
Told you it was weird.
Sources
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
