ready
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "ready", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "ready" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "ready" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
ready is anEnglishadj. It means: Prepared for immediate action or use. Pronounced /ˈɹɛd.i/. It ranks #532 in English word frequency. Often confused with red and Rey.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ready |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /ˈɹɛd.i/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #532 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ready is 5 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɹɛd.i/. Corpus data places it at rank #532 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for ready, with forms such as "erady", "raedy", and "readdy". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "red", "Rey", "real", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English redy, redi, rædiȝ, iredi, ȝerǣdi, alteration ( + -y) of earlier irēd, irede, ȝerād (“ready, prepared”), from Old English rǣde, ġerǣde (also ġerȳde) ("prepared, prompt, ready, ready for riding (horse), mounted (on a horse), skilled, simpl… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is ready, spelled R-E-A-D-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Prepared for immediate action or use.
- 2Prepared for immediate action or use.
- 3Inclined; apt to happen.
- 4Liable at any moment.
- 5Not slow or hesitating; quick in action or perception of any kind.
- 6Offering itself at once; at hand; opportune; convenient.
Etymology
From Middle English redy, redi, rædiȝ, iredi, ȝerǣdi, alteration ( + -y) of earlier irēd, irede, ȝerād (“ready, prepared”), from Old English rǣde, ġerǣde (also ġerȳde) ("prepared, prompt, ready, ready for riding (horse), mounted (on a horse), skilled, simple, easy"), from Proto-Germanic *garaidijaz, *raidijaz, from base *raidaz (“ready”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂reh₁dʰ-, *h₂reh₁- (“to count, put in order, arrange, make comfortable”) and also probably conflated with Proto-Indo-European *reydʰ- (“to ride”) in the sense of "set to ride, able or fit to go, ready". Cognate with Scots readie, reddy (“ready, prepared”), West Frisian ree (“ready”), Dutch gereed (“ready”), German bereit (“ready”), Danish rede (“ready”), Swedish redo (“ready, fit, prepared”), Norwegian reiug (“ready, prepared”), Icelandic greiður (“easy, light”), Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐍂𐌰𐌹𐌸𐍃 (garaiþs, “arranged, ordered”).
Synonyms
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: erady,raedy,readdy,readyy,reayd,reday,rready
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for ready
Misspelling Variants of "ready"
Frequency rank: #532 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter R in our English index: