Unschedules

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To cancel or remove a previously arranged event or appointment
2. To take a planned activity out of the schedule, making it no longer occurring
3. Describing the act of altering plans to eliminate specific scheduled commitments

Etymology: "Unschedules" is the third-person singular present form of "unschedule," a verb meaning to remove items from a plan or timetable. The verb is built from the prefix "un-," which here reverses or removes an action, attached to "schedule." The base word "schedule" has a long and tangled past: it traces back through Old French "cedule" and Medieval Latin "schedula," a diminutive of Latin "scheda," a strip of papyrus, so the notion of a written list sits at its core. The reversing prefix is the key to "unschedule." English has long used "un-" with verbs to undo an action, as in "unpack" or "unwrap," and speakers applied the same pattern to "schedule" once it was common as a verb meaning to put something into a timetable. The result is a word that means taking something back off the timetable rather than simply not scheduling it at all.