Words · Meanings · Passages
Traherne Lexicon
A Reader’s Companion to Centuries of Meditations
471 entries · 0 subsidiary termsEntries
325–360 of 471
Pity and compassion
Compassion is a responsive concern for another's suffering.
Centuries of Meditations
Place
Place can be spatial location, the position of a part within a whole, or the inward presence an object has in an understanding.
Centuries of Meditations
Platforms
Platforms are plans, patterns, or models on which a thing can be formed.
Centuries of Meditations
Plato
Plato is a named philosophical authority in the Centuries.
Centuries of Meditations
Pleasure
Pleasure is enjoyment or a pleasing good.
Centuries of Meditations
Plutarch
Plutarch is the Greek moralist whom Traherne names as an authority on superstition.
Centuries of Meditations
Pomegranate
The pomegranate is a many-seeded fruit.
Centuries of Meditations
Pomp
Pomp is outward splendour, ceremonial display, or worldly magnificence.
Centuries of Meditations
Possession
Possession is having or holding something as one’s own.
Centuries of Meditations
Poverty
Poverty is lack of material means, but poor can also describe deficient knowledge or a constricted apprehension of one’s true riches.
Centuries of Meditations
Power and capacity
Power means ability or capacity; in the contrast with act it names what can be exercised, as distinguished from its actual exercise.
Centuries of Meditations
Practice and exercise
Exercise is the active use of a power; practice is its repeated enactment.
Centuries of Meditations
Praise
Praise acknowledges and celebrates excellence.
Centuries of Meditations
Prayer
Prayer is address to God, including petition, confession, praise, and desire for a transformed life.
Centuries of Meditations
Precedent
Precedent means an example or pattern available for imitation.
Centuries of Meditations
Presence
Presence is being with or before something.
Centuries of Meditations
Preservation
Preservation is the sustaining of something already given or made.
Centuries of Meditations
Preternatural
Preternatural means outside or beyond nature’s proper course.
Centuries of Meditations
Prevent
To prevent often means to go before, anticipate, or provide in advance.
Centuries of Meditations
Pride
Pride is a disordered elevation of the self, particularly through false estimates of status and worth.
Centuries of Meditations
Principle
A principle is a beginning, foundation, or rule of action.
Centuries of Meditations
Profit
Profit means benefit, advantage, or useful effect.
Centuries of Meditations
Propriety
Propriety here usually means property, ownership, or a relation by which something is properly one’s own.
Centuries of Meditations
Prospect
Prospect means a view or the scene presented to sight, including inward or imaginative sight.
Centuries of Meditations
Providence
Providence is divine care and ordering of creatures and events toward their ends.
Centuries of Meditations
Prudence
Prudence is discerning conduct: judging how to act well in particular circumstances.
Centuries of Meditations
Punishment
Punishment is suffering or loss consequent upon wrongdoing.
Centuries of Meditations
Purity
Purity is freedom from corrupting mixture or defilement.
Centuries of Meditations
Pyrrhus and Cineas
Pyrrhus is the conquering king in the anecdote, and Cineas the philosophical counsellor who questions his purpose.
Centuries of Meditations
Quick and quicken
Quick can mean alive, keenly sensitive, or responsive; to quicken is to give life, revive, or stir into active exercise.
Centuries of Meditations
Quintessence
Quintessence is the purest or most concentrated essence.
Centuries of Meditations
Rapine
Rapine is violent plunder, forcible seizure, or predatory taking.
Centuries of Meditations
Reason
Reason is the power and activity of discerning grounds, relations, and consequences.
Centuries of Meditations
Recompense
A reward is a benefit answering to action or service.
Centuries of Meditations
Recreation
Recreation is an activity that refreshes or delights.
Centuries of Meditations
Redemption
Redemption carries the language of release at a cost.
Centuries of Meditations
About this collection
October 2026
Centuries of Meditations · Thomas Traherne
About this collection and downloads
471 contextual articles from the complete Centuries of Meditations, with 410 numbered positions, including the editorial notice at II.88 and the unfinished Fifth Century ending at V.10.
A companion for reading
This lexicon accompanies Thomas Traherne's Centuries of Meditations in the Diotimos Editions annotated edition of 2026. Its 471 articles explain the book's characteristic words, recurrent images, scriptural figures and habits of argument. They range from everyday things, such as air, corn and water, to the governing ideas of felicity, enjoyment, love, infinity and possession. The scope is the complete work: four numbered Centuries followed by the unfinished Fifth. The numbering runs through 410 positions, but there are 409 actual meditations. At II.88 the Diotimos edition prints only an editorial notice: its explanatory note says that Traherne skipped that number, with no missing text. The Fifth Century ends at V.10.
Traherne repeatedly gives familiar words unfamiliar work. To enjoy is to enter into delighted possession; a want can disclose a capacity; a common thing can be a greater treasure than a rarity. These senses are best learned by returning to the passages where they operate. The lexicon therefore offers interpretation alongside lexical explanation. It does not replace continuous reading, and a cross-reference is an invitation to compare, not a claim that two words mean the same thing.
The articles are arranged alphabetically. Traherne wrote in English, so the line beneath each headword gives English forms and useful equivalents. Related forms and less prominent senses can be found through the lexical index. Longer articles make room for the distinctions that carry the argument; shorter ones explain a particular image, older usage or local difficulty.
How to read an entry
The word identifies the sense that matters here, including older uses that a modern reader might miss. In Traherne follows the word or idea through the Centuries. This is a reading of the cited passages, not a set of definitions attributed to Traherne. Some articles include additional named discussions where a central concept needs more space.
The places gives selected, annotated references. These are guides to fruitful reading, not exhaustive concordances. In this edition points out a lexical, spelling or editorial issue that affects interpretation. See also links to other articles. The source note attached to the forms line records the textual basis of the article. Headwords sometimes normalize an inflected form or name a clearly present idea; the article states the relation to the wording of the text.
Three indexes supplement the alphabetical sequence. The Lexical forms and aliases index helps readers find related English forms and expressions. The Passage index leads from a cited meditation to the articles that discuss it. The Thematic index groups connected readings without imposing a single system on the book. These indexes are linked in the digital editions.
References and textual conventions
References take the form I.3, meaning the First Century, meditation 3; V.10 is the last surviving meditation. Links lead to the corresponding meditation in the book. Century and meditation numbers remain the stable references across formats.
The underlying text is the Diotimos edition, which identifies Bertram Dobell's 1908 edition and its public-domain transcription as its copy-text and describes manuscript-based corrections. Its introduction, explanatory footnotes and other 2026 material are editorial apparatus, not Traherne's prose. An article that uses a modern explanatory note identifies it as such. Historical definitions here are contextual reading glosses; no independent dictionary, manuscript collation or scholarly edition is silently claimed as a source.
Short quotations retain the wording of the annotated edition. Its original capitalization can be rhetorically significant without making every capitalized word a technical term. Brackets and struck-through readings in the source belong to that edition's textual presentation and should not be confused with new words supplied by this lexicon. Biblical phrases and inherited images are discussed as Traherne deploys them; the articles do not turn an allusion into proof of a particular unmentioned source.