read [OE] Alfred the Great, king of Wessex between 871 and 899, did much to promote education in his kingdom, and the word read is first found in his writings. The word goes back to a Germanic root meaning ‘advise, guess, interpret’, and Old English riddle comes from the same root. The three Rs [E19th] have been ‘reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmetic’, regarded as the fundamentals of elementary education. The expression is said to have originated as a toast proposed by the banker and politician Sir William Curtis (1752–1829).

If you want to give someone a severe warning or reprimand, you may read the riot act to them. The Riot Act was passed by the British government in 1715 to prevent civil disorder in the wake of the Jacobite rebellion of that year. The Act made it an offence for a group of twelve or more people to refuse to disperse within an hour of being ordered to do so, after a magistrate had read a particular section of the Act to them. This created something of a problem, as reading legal language aloud is not the easiest thing to do in the middle of a genuine riot—and defendants might claim later that they had not heard the key words. The Act failed to prevent a number of major disturbances over the years, but was not repealed until 1967. Riot [ME] originally meant dissolute living and comes from an Old French word meaning ‘quarrel’.