ready-made

comparative more ready-made · superlative most ready-made · alternative readymade

1. Preexisting or made previously and suitable for use without further preparation or modification; comparable with regard to the amount of preparation required.

   The potlatch was perhaps the most ready-made container for explaining the gospel and the kingdom of God, in all its counterintuitiveness, to native people.

   2010, Mark Buchanan, Spiritual Rhythm: Being with Jesus Every Season of Your Soul, page 131

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   They used to take a big horse-blanket and sit on the grass a little to the left of the lower end, where there is a dip in the ground, and where the occupied graves stop short and the ready-made ones are not ready. Each well-regulated Indian Cemetery keeps half a dozen graves permanently open for contingencies and incidental wear and tear.

   1889, Rudyard Kipling, “At the Pit's Mouth”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 52

   Incidentally, they became mindful of the meaning of thrift and waste and learned to practice an economy of material and operations which was not elicited in the play with the more ready-made educational material.

   1937, Association for Childhood Education International, Childhood Education, volume 14, page 35

   1993, Leslie Howard Owens, Commentary to Bill C.Malone, Blacks and Whites and the Music of the Old South, Ted Ownby (editor), Black and White, page 185, The periods of massive revivals, especially the Awakenings, and spiritual movements in Protestant America in general seem the most ready made to attract Africans to Christianity.

2. not comparableMade in advance to a standard specification.

   During the 1830s and 1840s, ready-made standardized shoes and clothing increasingly challenged the custom-made products of small handicraft workshops.

   1993, Ronald Aminzade, Ballots and Barricades: Class Formation and Republican Politics in France, 1830-1871, page 68

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   Commercial use of these machines was enhanced by the development of a system of proportional measurements and subsequently of proportional sizes, making feasible ready-made clothing on a mass scale.

   2000, Diana Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing, page 75

   The Tees Valley already produces more than 50% of all the hydrogen in the UK so it makes sense to bring it [hydrogen fuelling] here because you've already got a ready-made supply.

   2020 January 2, Graeme Pickering, “Fuelling the changes on Teesside rails”, in Rail, page 57

   Synonyms: off-the-peg, reach-me-down

3. artBeing or relating to found objects.

   […]including both the most everyday and popular, the most ready-made or found objects, the most quotidian of performances.

   2008, Elizabeth A. Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth, page 4, footnote

plural ready-mades · alternative readymade

1. A ready-made object.
2. artSynonym of found object.

   Synonyms: found object