In that century, the term "prescheme" had a certain cachet in mathematics. It wouldn't surprise me if the name choice for this scheme dialect was in part a nod

In that century, the term "prescheme" had a certain cachet in mathematics. It wouldn't surprise me if the name choice for this scheme dialect was in part a nod to the math term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheme_(mathematics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheme_(mathematics) >In the early days, this was called a prescheme, and a scheme was defined to be a separated prescheme. The term prescheme has fallen out of use, but can still be found in older books, such as Grothendieck's "Éléments de géométrie algébrique" and Mumford's "Red Book".