riddle

Riddle comes from Old English rǣdels, also written redels, meaning an enigma or puzzling saying. That noun was formed from rǣdan, a verb meaning "to advise, interpret, read, guess." Early English thus linked the puzzle not to nonsense but to the act of finding counsel or interpretation. The word belonged to a wider Germanic family of reading and advising.

By the 8th to 10th centuries, Anglo-Saxon England had a lively riddle tradition in Latin and Old English schools. The Exeter Book, copied in the late 10th century, preserved dozens of Old English riddles. These poems played with double meanings, hidden objects, and sly voice. The form taught wit, memory, and verbal control.

Middle English kept the word in changing spellings such as ridel and redel. Over time the verb sense of interpreting and the noun sense of puzzle remained close companions. The modern spelling riddle settled in early modern English. Its meaning narrowed toward a verbal puzzle, though echoes of interpretation stayed inside it.

Today a riddle is a question, statement, or description that requires solving. The same word can also mean a perplexing person or thing, as in "a riddle to everyone around him." That extension is old and natural. What asks to be interpreted becomes, in time, whatever resists interpretation.