Ahead means in front, or in the time still to come. Straight ahead, the road ahead, the year ahead.
Ahead of means in front of and also earlier than: ahead of schedule, ahead of time. Get ahead means to make progress in a career. Go ahead means both to proceed and, as a noun, permission to. Note ahead of the game; look ahead; and that ahead of its time is the standard compliment for anything that failed commercially and was later proved right.
1adverbaheadIn front, or further forward.~73%
“Go straight ahead and turn left at the church.”
2adverbtimeIn the time still to come.~27%
“There are hard times ahead for the company.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 26 sentences found in the wild and placed 26 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
ahead is a position in front or in future.
Middle English
heed
English
head
English, today
ahead
Built from
From a + head. Perhaps originally a nautical term, beyond the head (of a ship), then drifting into more general English usage where it is used to describe something as being in front of. head comes from Middle English heed. From Middle English efd, had, hafd, heafd, hed, heed, hefet, heid, het, hevd, heved, hevid, hiede, hæfd, hæfedd, from Old English hēafod (“head; top; leader; origin”), from Proto-West Germanic haubud, from Proto-Germanic haubudą (“head”), from Proto-Indo-European káput (“head”), from kap- (“head; bowl, cup”). The modern word comes from Old English oblique stem hēafd-; the expected Modern English outcome for hēafod would be heaved (similar to the Middle English word). a doublet of cape and capo and caput and chef and chief and Howth*.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA