Other forms: prepared, preparing, prepares
To prepare is to make everything ready before something happens. Prepare a meal, prepare for an exam, prepare the ground.
The two patterns mean different things and both are common: prepare something is to make the thing itself ready, and prepare for something is to get ready for an event. Prepare to do something means to be about to. The adjective prepared works the same way — prepared for the worst — and be prepared to do something means to be willing, which is a different meaning worth noticing: I am not prepared to accept that means I refuse.
1verbprepareTo make something ready.
“She prepared the room before anybody arrived.”
synonyms: get ready, arrange
2verbreadyTo get ready for something.
“They spent two months preparing for the inspection.”
3verbverbTo be willing to do something.
“I am not prepared to argue about it again.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
prepare is a way of getting ready.
Latin praeparare is prae-, before, plus parare, to make ready — the same verb behind repair, apparatus and parent, which is one who brings forth. Preparing is making ready beforehand, and the word says so twice.
Proto-Indo-European
*per-
Latin
praeparo — make ready in advance
Middle French
preparer
English, today
prepare
Built from
Partially a a back-formation from preparation; and partially borrowed from Middle French preparer, from Classical Latin praeparo (“make ready in advance”), from prae- (“pre-”) + paro (“make ready”). Compare Middle English preparaten (“to prepare”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA