Readying

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of preparing individuals or things for upcoming activities or events
2. The process of making necessary arrangements or modifications prior to an event or operation
3. The act of making plans and taking steps to become fully prepared for a task or event

Etymology: Ready started out meaning something closer to "riding." Its Old English ancestor, "gerǣde," described a horse that was saddled and mounted, prepared for a journey, and the word carried that sense of being set in order before anything else. Its deeper roots are in a Germanic base meaning "to arrange" or "to make comfortable," which is why many of its relatives across the Germanic languages, from German "bereit" to Dutch "gereed," still share that idea of things being put right in advance. Readying is simply the act of making ready, so it inherits that older sense of arranging things so they are fit to go. The earliest meaning of the family was physical and practical: a rider getting a mount into shape. The sense of general preparedness developed from there.

Synonyms: preparing, arranging, organizing, assembling, setting up