read
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: rēd
ipa: /ɹiːd/
ipa: /ɹid/
ipa: /rɛːd/
ipa: /riːd/
rhymes: -iːd
homophone: reed
homophone: rede
Forms: form: reads
Etymology: From Middle English reden, from Old English rǣdan (“to counsel, advise, consult; interpret, read”), from Proto-West Germanic *rādan, from Proto-Germanic *rēdaną (“advise, counsel”), from Proto-Indo-European *Hreh₁dʰ- (“to arrange”).
Cognate with Scots rede, red (“to advise, counsel, decipher, read”), Saterland Frisian räide (“to advise, counsel”), West Frisian riede (“to advise, counsel”), Dutch raden (“to advise; guess”), German raten (“to advise; guess”), Danish råde (“to advise”), Swedish råda (“to advise, counsel”), Persian رده (rade, “to order, to arrange, class”). In West Germanic the verb had a sense “interpret”, which developed further into “interpret letters” in English and “interpret by intuition, guess” on the continent. Compare rede.
Senses: examples: text: I had a read of the evening papers.
text: One newswoman here lets magazines for a penny a read.
ref: 1879, Frederick James Furnivall, letter to the editor of "The Spectator":
text: And when he finishes supper / Planning to have a read at the evening paper / It's Put a screw in this wall— / He has no time at all[…]
ref: 1958, Philip Larkin, Self's the Man:
text: In other words, the system can do 1200 reads per second with no writes, the average write is twice as slow as the average read, and the relationship is linear.
ref: 2006, MySQL administrator's guide and language reference, page 393:
glosses: A reading or an act of reading, especially of an actor's part of a play or a piece of stored data.
examples: text: His thrillers are always a gripping read.
glosses: Something to be read; a written work.
examples: text: What's your read of the current political situation?
text: On the quarterback's first read of the situation, his target receiver was not open.
glosses: A person's interpretation or impression of something.
examples: text: [As] Corey points out, "if you and I are both black queens then we can't call each other black queens because that's not a read. That's a [fact]."
ref: 1997, Framing Culture: Africanism, Sexuality and Performance, page 186 (also discussing Paris is Burning)
text: Like most African-American women, Pearlie Mae uses snapping in many of the same ways that black gay men use it: to accentuate a read.
ref: 2003, Philip Auslander, Performance: Media and technology, page 185:
text: I learned that it was acceptable to be witty, especially if you were one of the wearblackallthetime, deconstructivist, radical, feministbitchydiva girls who could give a harsh read (i.e., critique) or throw shade […].
ref: 2013, bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom, →ISBN:
qualifier: at first especially in the black LGBTQ community
glosses: An instance of reading (“calling attention to someone's flaws; a taunt or insult”).
topics: biochemistry
biology
chemistry
microbiology
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
glosses: The identification of a specific sequence of genes in a genome or bases in a nucleic acid string.
Derived terms: beach read
chemistry read
cold read
destructive read
dirty read
non-destructive read
phantom read
pseudoread
quick read
read count
read head
read-in
read length
read-out
readout
sensitivity read
stale read
table read