2026 is the the UK National Year of Reading. Sadly across the world just 45% of ten-year-olds say that they read for pleasure. And if you think that the UK is an advanced country, that figure is just 29% in the UK. Perhaps the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures might tempt a few more.
The English word read has a fascinating history, stretching back more than a thousand years. Surprisingly, its original meaning had little to do with books or the written word. Instead, it was associated with giving advice, interpreting signs and solving riddles.
The word derives from the Old English rǣdan, which meant to advise, counsel, interpret or explain. It could also mean to deliberate or decide. In Anglo-Saxon society, where literacy was largely confined to the clergy and a small educated elite, interpreting spoken words, signs and situations was often more important than deciphering written text.
The word has close relatives in other Germanic languages. Old Norse ráða meant to advise, interpret or rule, while German raten still means to advise or guess. The modern German word Rätsel, meaning riddle, belongs to the same linguistic family. All these words reflect the ancient connection between understanding something and working out its meaning.
The transition from interpreting signs to reading written language was a natural development. To read a manuscript was, essentially, to interpret the marks on a page. By the Old English period, rǣdan was already being used in this sense, although its older meanings survived alongside it.
An intriguing remnant of the original meaning survives in the expression to read someone the riot act. This refers to the historical practice of publicly reading a legal proclamation ordering a disorderly crowd to disperse. The Riot Act of 1714 required a magistrate to read a prescribed declaration before certain penalties could be imposed. Today, the expression simply means to reprimand someone severely.
Another survival is to read between the lines, meaning to discover something that is implied rather than explicitly stated. This takes us remarkably close to the original sense of interpreting or discerning meaning.
The word read also has an unusual grammatical characteristic. Its present and past forms are spelled identically but pronounced differently. We say “I read every day”, rhyming with reed, but “I read yesterday”, rhyming with red. This peculiarity arose because English pronunciation changed while the spelling remained relatively stable.
The noun reader appeared in Old English, while reading developed into a term encompassing both the act of deciphering written words and the interpretation of their meaning.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this linguistic journey is that the word has never entirely abandoned its original significance. Whether we read a novel, read someone’s expression, read a situation or read the future, we are doing essentially what our Anglo-Saxon ancestors did: examining signs and attempting to understand what they mean.