Language Of Confusion: Ready Or Not

Ready is kind of a weird word. It comes from the Middle English redi and Old English raede or geraede, which means, well, ready. It’s from the Proto Germanic (ga)raitha-, which might just be from the Proto Indo European reidh-, to ride. I mean, I guess you want to be ready if you’re riding something. And I suppose that might not even be its origin.
 
Okay, this is too short on its own, so let’s look at ride just in case they are related after all. It comes from the Middle English riden, which is from the Old English ridan. Straightforward so far. That’s from the Proto Germanic ridan, which is from reidh-, because this word barely changed in the past several thousand years.
 
Unbelievably, road is from here—yes, R-O-A-D, though rode, past tense of ride, is obviously from the same place, too. But road was actually rode in Middle English, then rad in Old English, and before that it was the Proto Germanic raido. And what’s that from? Reidh-. Because you ride on roads.
 
And still we’re not done! Raid showed up in the early fifteenth century, and that is also from the Old English rad, because a raid was a “mounted military expedition”, meaning they were riding. So even if ready isn’t related, we are certain that ride, road, and raid are.
 
What the hell.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
University of Texas at Arlington
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary