/ˈrɛdi/
[adjective] Prepared and able to do something, or available and suitable for immediate use. If you are ready, you have done everything you need to do before starting.
'Ready' comes from a root meaning 'to ride' — as in a horse saddled and prepared to gallop at a moment's notice.
The word 'ready' stretches back to Old English, where it appeared as 'rǣde' or 'geræde', meaning prepared, equipped, or prompt. This form was used in everyday Anglo-Saxon life to describe a person, weapon, or animal that was fit for immediate action. The spelling and sound shifted naturally over centuries of use, eventually settling into the Middle English form 'redy' by around the 13th century, before arriving at the modern 'ready' we use today.
The Old English 'rǣde' is rooted in the Proto-Germanic word '*garaidijaz', which itself carried the sense of being arranged or ordered into a state of readiness. This Proto-Germanic root is connected to another fascinating Germanic root, '*raidō', meaning 'a ride' or 'a journey on horseback'. The link is vivid and practical: to be ready in the ancient world was to have your horse saddled and your gear packed — to be literally prepared to ride. Readiness was not an abstract quality but a physical state, something you could see and touch.
This riding connection becomes even clearer when you look at the word's relatives across the Germanic language family. Old High German had 'reiti' and Old Norse had 'greiðr', both meaning prepared or clear, all descended from the same root. The English word 'raid' is a close cousin — it came into English in the 15th century from Scots, borrowed from Old Norse 'reið', meaning a ride or a military expedition on horseback. So 'ready' and 'raid' are, in a surprising way, siblings born from the same ancient idea of mounted movement.
By the time Middle English speakers were using 'redy', the word had already broadened well beyond horses and weapons. It described food that was cooked, roads that were clear, answers that came quickly, and people who were willing. This broadening is typical of very practical, everyday words — they start with a concrete image and slowly absorb more and more of life around them. The phrase 'at the ready', meaning in a position for immediate use, preserves that old military flavour most clearly.
One of the word's most interesting grammatical lives is as a prefix. 'Already' was formed by combining 'all' and 'ready' in Middle English, giving 'al redy', meaning fully prepared or by this time. From there, it drifted into expressing that something has happened before a certain point — the sense we use today. Similarly, 'ready-made' captures the idea of something prepared in advance, a phrase that became especially important during the Industrial Revolution when goods were manufactured before a buyer was found, rather than made to order. The word has quietly shaped far more of our language than most people ever notice.