Words · Meanings · Passages
Traherne Lexicon
A Reader’s Companion to Centuries of Meditations
471 entries · 0 subsidiary termsEntries
361–396 of 471
Reflection
Reflection can name thought turned back upon an experience, or light returned from a surface.
Centuries of Meditations
Relation
Relation is a thing’s connection with something else, and can also mean a human relationship.
Centuries of Meditations
Religion
Religion includes belief, worship, and the ordering of life toward God.
Centuries of Meditations
Remembrance
Remembrance is active mental presence: a past gift or an absent good is recalled so that it can affect present understanding and conduct.
Centuries of Meditations
Repentance
Repentance joins an altered direction of life to the acknowledgment of wrong.
Centuries of Meditations
Resentment
Resentments are deep feelings, inward responses, or a person’s felt apprehension of things.
Centuries of Meditations
Respect
Reverence is deep respect expressed in regard or conduct.
Centuries of Meditations
Rest
Repose is rest from agitation or disturbance.
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Resurrection
Resurrection is rising from death.
Centuries of Meditations
Return and turning back
Return can mean movement back to a source or a responsive offering.
Centuries of Meditations
Revelation
Revelation means a making known of what was concealed.
Centuries of Meditations
Righteousness
Righteousness is moral rightness, including giving what is due.
Centuries of Meditations
River
A river is a continuous flowing body of water.
Centuries of Meditations
Room
Room means space available for something, not only a chamber in a house.
Centuries of Meditations
Sabbath
The Sabbath is sacred rest, and in the plural can designate appointed holy days.
Centuries of Meditations
Sacrifice
Sacrifice names a religious offering and, by extension, the surrender of oneself.
Centuries of Meditations
Saint
A saint is a holy person belonging to God.
Centuries of Meditations
Salvation
Salvation names rescue from the powers that destroy life and the resulting condition of safety and blessedness.
Centuries of Meditations
Sand
A sand means a single grain of sand.
Centuries of Meditations
School
School can mean a place of teaching or a learned tradition with recognized maxims.
Centuries of Meditations
Science
Science can name an organized body of knowledge.
Centuries of Meditations
Scripture
Scripture names writings received as sacred, here the Christian Bible.
Centuries of Meditations
Sea
The sea is a created body of water, useful as well as beautiful.
Centuries of Meditations
Self
Self marks the person considered as the subject of thought, affection, and action.
Centuries of Meditations
Self-endedness
To be self-ended is to make oneself the end or purpose of an action.
Centuries of Meditations
Self-love
Self-love is love directed toward oneself.
Centuries of Meditations
Seneca
Seneca is the Roman philosopher named as the source of a maxim about the reciprocal gift of self and world.
Centuries of Meditations
Sense
Sense can name a bodily faculty or the vivid apprehension of a fact.
Centuries of Meditations
Sensible and sensibles
Sensible can mean aware or capable of feeling, and can also mean perceptible to the senses.
Centuries of Meditations
Service
Service is action or operation that benefits someone.
Centuries of Meditations
Servitude
Bondage is subjection that prevents free movement or action.
Centuries of Meditations
Shadow
A shadow can obscure light, resemble something without its full substance, or shelter a person.
Centuries of Meditations
Sight
Sight means bodily vision and, by extension, the apprehension of understanding.
Centuries of Meditations
Silence
Silence is not assigned one stable spiritual value.
Centuries of Meditations
Simplicity
Simplicity can mean uncontrived plainness or the absence of division.
Centuries of Meditations
Sin
Sin is moral and religious wrongdoing, not simply pain, limitation, or an unpleasant experience.
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.