Shrewsbury, Oct. 19.
_Gradely_.--It seems rather a rash step to differ from the mass of critical
authority with which your last number has brought this shy, old-fashioned
provincial word into a blaze of literary notoriety. Yet I cannot help
conceiving the original form of this adverb to be _grathedly_ ([Old
English: geraðlic], root [Old English: rað], with the preteritive prefix
[Old English: ge]) or _gerathely_. In our Yorkshire dialect, to _grathe_
(pronounced _gradhe_) means, to make ready, to put in a state of _order_ or
_fitness_. A man inconveniently accoutred or furnished with implements for
the performance of some operation on which he was employed, {362} observed
to me the other day, "I's ill grathed for't job"--rather a terse Saxon
contrast to my latinized paraphrase.
_Grathedly_ would then mean, "In a state of good order, fitness, readiness,
or perfection."
To the cognate German _gerade_ adv., I find the senses, "directly, just,
exactly, _perfectly_, rightly."
The prevailing impression given by your numerous testimonials as to the
character of the word _gradely_, is one of decency, order, rightness,
perfectness.
I fancy the whole family (who might be called the children of _rath_), viz.
[Old English: rað], _rathe_ (_gerathe, grathedly, gradely_), _rather_ (only
a Saxon form of _readier_), have as a common primeval progenitor the
Sanscrit [Sanskrit: radh] (_radh_), which is interpreted "a process towards
perfection;" in other words, "a becoming ready."