rede

Etymology

The noun is inherited from Middle English rede, also reed and red,^[2][3] inherited from Old English rǣd (“advice, counsel, council”),^[4][2][5][6] from Proto-Germanic *rēdaz,^[1] formed from the same base as the verb.^[7][4][8] The verb is inherited from Middle English reden,^[5][2][9] inherited from Old English rǣdan (“to rule; to advise”),^[5][10] from *rēdaną (“to decide”);^[11] it is the same word as read, and the spelling rede was kept apart only for archaic senses.^{[4][7][12][13]} The noun is cognate with Old Frisian rēd, Old Saxon rād, Old High German rāt, Dutch raad, German Rat and Old Norse ráð,^{[4][14][8][9]} and the verb with Old High German rātan, Old Norse ráða and Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐍂𐌴𐌳𐌰𐌽 (garedan).^[11][15] Kroonen derives the verb from Proto-Indo-European *Hréh₁dʰ-e-.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Counsel given by one person to another, in Old English, in Beowulf;^[4] the verb in the sense "to rule, guide" is also in Beowulf.^[4] The 1989 edition of the OED has its first example of the noun from about 1000.^[16]

Semantic evolution

In Old English the noun covered a wide field: advice, a council, the power of deliberation, a decision or plan, a course of action, what is advantageous, even fate.^[4][6] The verb likewise moved from ruling and guarding to taking counsel, deciding and advising.^[4][14] Ayto traces the modern sense of read through "interpret" from this older "advise, consider".^[12] Many of these senses had died out by about 1600.^[4][14] In Johnson's day (1755) the noun was "not used", though he quotes Hamlet's "recks not his own rede" and Spenser for the verb.^[17] According to Etymonline and the OED, the noun fell out of literary use in the 17th century and came back in archaic and poetic diction in the 19th;^[8][4] Weekley credits Scott with the revival.^[13] The Century Dictionary, quoted by Etymonline, found that Spenser had made the spelling popular and that "there is no historical ground for a difference in spelling".^[8]

Timeline

• Old English – noun, counsel or advice; verb, to rule or guide.^[4]
• Old English – noun, a council (obsolete by 1598); a decision or plan (obsolete by 1870).^[4]
• Old English – verb, to advise or counsel a person, in Cynewulf's Elene.^[4]
• c. 1275 – noun, a statement or speech, in Laȝamon's Brut.^[4]
• c. 1480 – noun, a story or saying (obsolete by 1869).^[4]
• 18th century – verb, to interpret.^[7]
• 1871 – noun, an interpretation, in Browning's Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.^[4][18]

Meanings

Noun

1. (archaic) Advice or counsel: He ignored his father's rede.^{[10][2][19][4]}
2. (archaic) An explanation or interpretation.^[10][2][18]
3. (archaic) A story, or a proverbial saying.^[2][18][4]
4. (obsolete, Old English–1870) A decision or resolve; a plan.^[4][14][18]
5. (obsolete, Old English–1598) A council, or the act of taking counsel together.^[4][6]

Verb

1. (archaic) To advise or warn: William Morris's “My son, I rede thee stay at home”.^{[10][2][19][14]}
2. (archaic) To explain or interpret, as a riddle or dream.^[10][2][19]
3. (dialect) To guess, or to predict.^[2][9]
4. (obsolete, Old English–1500) To rule or govern.^[4][14]
5. (obsolete, Old English–1814) To take counsel together; to deliberate.^[4][14]

Word family

• redeless
• redecraft

Related words

• read
• riddle
• unready

Usage notes

The OED and the Shorter Oxford separate from this word a verb rede, to put in order or clear, from the Germanic base of ready, which they treat with redd,^[4][14] and a noun rede, a small trench or furrow, of unknown origin.^[4][3] Wright records Scottish rede for a fairy being, a wraith, and an adjective meaning fierce or wild.^[20]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
7. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
13. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ a b c d e f g h Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
16. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
18. ^ a b c d The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers
19. ^ a b c Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
20. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)