plot

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
plot/plɒt/

▶noun

• 1 a plan made in secret by a group of people to do something illegal or harmful.

• 2 the main sequence of events in a play, novel, or film.

• 3 a small piece of ground marked out for building, gardening, etc.

• 4 a graph showing the relation between two variables.

  ■ chiefly US a diagram, chart, or map.

▶verb (plots, plotting, plotted)

• 1 secretly make plans to carry out (something illegal or harmful).

• 2 devise the plot of (a play, novel, or film).

• 3 mark (a route or position) on a chart.

  ■ mark out or allocate (points) on a graph.

  ■ make (a curve) by marking out a number of such points.

  ■ illustrate by use of a graph.

– phrases
lose the plot Brit. informal lose one's ability to understand or cope with what is happening.
the plot thickens see thicken.

– derivatives
plotless adjective,
plotter noun,
plotty adjective (informal).

– origin OE (in sense 3 of the noun), of unknown origin; the sense ‘secret plan’ is assoc. with OFr. complot ‘dense crowd, secret project’.