"ready" sales?
- Thread starter cheshire
- Start date
The sense of "ready" the writer is trying to use here is "immediate, quick, or prompt" but I think it needs to go with the attributes or reactions of a person, e.g. "ready wit", "ready smile", etc. Perhaps someone can think of other uses, but that seems to be the conventional usage.
We also say ready money, Mole. As in there were no cucumbers to had in the market, Sir, not even for ready money.
The first money taken at the start of the day's business, should be spat on to ensure ( ) sales and good luck.
Cheshire, I'm sure I've told you to use active constructions where you can in English. If I haven't, I should have done: change it to
You should spit on the first money taken at the start of the day's business, to ensure enormous sales and good luck.
The mole has told you not to use ready; high would be the safe choice, but the idea is delightfully eccentric, so I've suggested a slightly unusal adjective.
Ready money is money (often cash) that is to hand and ready to spend, this is not the intended meaning in "ready sales" here. They meant the "quick and immediate" sense and it doesn't work in this context, for the reason I explained.
To me it looks as if they have got this definition from a dictionary and have mis-applied it.
To me it looks as if they have got this definition from a dictionary and have mis-applied it.
Interesting, so it seems that ready in the sense of quick and immediate can (or perhaps could) be applied to something like "sales" and not just to someone's actions. I think that use in general only now survives in a few "collocations" such as "ready wit" and "ready smile", and even these are rather dated.