Preparedness

How to spell preparedness

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce preparedness

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does preparedness mean?

1. nounThe state of being ready and equipped to deal with something, especially an emergency or future demand.

Preparedness in a sentence

• The council reviewed its flood preparedness before the rainy season.

• Emergency preparedness saved the factory when the power failed.

Where does preparedness come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word builds on the verb 'prepare', which English took in the late 1300s from the Old French 'preparer', itself from the Latin 'praeparare'. That Latin verb joins 'prae', meaning 'before' or 'beforehand', to 'parare', meaning 'to make ready' or 'to furnish', so the literal idea was making something ready in advance. The same 'parare' root quietly powers a whole family of English words, including 'repair', 'apparatus', and 'separate'. To turn the verb into a noun for the state of being ready, English added the past participle ending '-ed' and then the abstract-noun suffix '-ness', a Germanic ending that turns adjectives into qualities. The result, recorded from the early 1600s, names the condition of being prepared, and its spelling trap is simply remembering that the full 'prepared' is preserved intact before '-ness', giving the cluster 'd-n' in the middle.

How the word is built

• prae- (before)
• par(e) (from Latin parare: to make ready)
• -ed (past participle)
• -ness (state or quality)