Devising

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Generating a systematic and innovative approach or strategy to address challenges
2. The process of forming detailed plans or methods to accomplish a goal
3. Making a thoughtful outline or design intended to solve problems or guide actions

Etymology: "Devising" is the present participle of "devise", and the verb's story starts with division. It descends from Latin "dividere", "to divide", through a frequentative form "divisare", meaning to divide repeatedly or into many parts. Vulgar Latin turned that into "devisare", and Old French shaped it into "deviser", which English borrowed as Middle English "devisen". The sense of parting things out lingered in the word: to devise was once to divide property by will, and that legal meaning is still behind the phrase "devise" for a bequest of real estate. From the same Old French stock came a noun, "devise", which passed into English as "device" and is a doublet of "devise". The two forms split apart over centuries, so the verb and the noun now look only loosely related, though both trace back to the same act of dividing and arranging. The sense of working out a plan, the one that "devising" carries here, grew naturally from arranging parts into a considered whole.

Synonyms: planning, formulating, contriving, inventing, creating