Meaning of ready in English

ready

adjective

/ˈred.i/ uk

/ˈred.i/

ready adjective (PREPARED)

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prepared and suitable for fast activity:

[ + to infinitive ] Are you ready to leave?

ready to Are you ready to order, Madam?

ready when you are Okay, Evie, ready when you are (= I am ready to do what we have arranged).

Dinner's ready!

Are you ready? Hurry up - we're late.

get ready We're leaving at eight o'clock, so you've got half an hour to get ready.

ready for The army are said to be ready for action.

be made/got ready for something The concert hall was made/got ready (= prepared) for the performance.

ready and waiting

waiting and prepared to act:

Secret information allowed the police to be ready and waiting when the robbers came out of the bank.

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If you're near the garage, could you check to see if the car's ready?
Well, he wants the report ready by tomorrow but I can always fob him off with some excuse.
She had to get the kids ready for school.
The way things are, I'll never have this ready by June.
The emergency services are ready to spring into action at a moment's notice.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Available and accessible

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Ready and willing

ready adjective (QUICK)

[ before noun ] mainly approving

quick with answers, jokes, solutions, etc.:

He had a ready reply to every question.

ready wit He was charming, with a ready wit (= the ability to quickly say clever and funny things).

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Intelligence

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Idioms

be ready to do something
be ready to roll
ready to hand
ready, set, go!

ready

noun

/ˈred.i/ uk

/ˈred.i/

at the ready

prepared to be used or to act immediately:

He stood by the phone, pencil at the ready.

(Definition of ready from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

ready | Intermediate English

ready

adjective [ not gradable ]

/ˈred·i/

ready adjective [not gradable] (PREPARED)

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prepared and suitable for action or use:

Dinner is ready.

The twins are getting ready for bed.

[ + to infinitive ] I’m ready to go now.

[ + to infinitive ] "Are you ready to order?" the waiter asked.

ready adjective [not gradable] (WILLING)

willing:

My friends are always ready to help me out.

ready adjective [not gradable] (QUICK)

quick, esp. in answering or in thinking of what to say:

He had a ready reply to every question.

(Definition of ready from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

ready | Business English

ready

adjective [ before noun ]

/ˈredi/ us

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available to be used at any time:

a ready source/supply

ready cash/money informal

money that is available to be spent immediately:

A demand by the court to pay the tax claim immediately would destroy the firm because it does not have enough ready cash.

(Definition of ready from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of ready

ready

If not for this storm, then you're ready for the next one that may come our way.

From CBS Local

Tube socks and tracksuits were in ready supply.

From Hollywood Reporter

I'm not ready to pull back and stop making a difference.

From Huffington Post

To be ready to die would be not to be living.

From The Atlantic

It's just something that you have to be ready for.

From The Seattle Times

So when you're ready, get out there and take a chance on yourself to find peace past the pain.

From Huffington Post

I wanted their world view to be larger, their dreams bigger and their respect for others more ready and ingrained.

From CNN

Eventually, she says, they got the tot in her seat and were ready for takeoff - when instead they were booted.

From New York Daily News

I was getting ready to go into the game.

From ESPN

It was always waiting there, the power, ready to be unleashed.

From TIME

And we knew that, first of all, he was going to be ready.

From ESPN

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of ready?