Words · Meanings · Passages
Traherne Lexicon
A Reader’s Companion to Centuries of Meditations
471 entries · 0 subsidiary termsEntries
37–72 of 471
Baptism
Baptism here is approached through the scriptural verb for baptizing with fire.
Centuries of Meditations
Beatific vision
Beatific means making blessed or happy.
Centuries of Meditations
Beauty
Beauty is an excellence that attracts delighted perception.
Centuries of Meditations
Beholding
To behold is to direct and sustain one's regard toward something.
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Being
Being may mean existence, an existent thing, or what something is.
Centuries of Meditations
Belief and opinion
Belief is assent to something as true.
Centuries of Meditations
Benefactor and beneficence
A benefactor confers a benefit; beneficence names doing good to another.
Centuries of Meditations
Benefit
A benefit is a good conferred or an advantage actually afforded.
Centuries of Meditations
Birth
Birth marks entry into human life.
Centuries of Meditations
Blessing
A blessing can be a bestowed good, the happiness attending it, or a good conferred through a person.
Centuries of Meditations
Blindness
Blindness is the absence of sight.
Centuries of Meditations
Blood
Blood is bodily life made visible, especially when shed.
Centuries of Meditations
Body
A body is an extended, visible, and locally situated being or the physical organism of a person.
Centuries of Meditations
Book
A book is both a physical receptacle of writing and an ordered means of communicating knowledge.
Centuries of Meditations
Bosom
The bosom is the breast understood as a place of embrace, intimacy, and guarded inward thought.
Centuries of Meditations
Bounty
Bounty is liberal giving, especially generosity worthy of a great giver.
Centuries of Meditations
Brazen serpent
Brazen means made of brass or bronze.
Centuries of Meditations
Bread
Bread is ordinary sustaining food.
Centuries of Meditations
Breath
Breath is the movement of air sustaining bodily life.
Centuries of Meditations
Bride and bridegroom
Bride and bridegroom are the partners in marriage.
Centuries of Meditations
Brightness
Brightness is manifested light or lustre.
Centuries of Meditations
Brotherhood
Brotherhood is the relation of shared kinship, here extended into spiritual and universal human fellowship.
Centuries of Meditations
Business
Business is an affair that occupies attention.
Centuries of Meditations
Cabinet
A cabinet is a small repository or collection of precious or curious things.
Centuries of Meditations
Capacity
Capacity is room or ability to receive and contain.
Centuries of Meditations
Carcase and eagles
Carcase is the older spelling of carcass, a dead body.
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Care
Care may be attentive concern for another's good or the anxious burden of maintaining one's own affairs.
Centuries of Meditations
Cato
Cato here names the authority attached to the Distichs of Cato, a collection of Latin moral verses.
Centuries of Meditations
Cause
A cause is what accounts for a thing's existence, character, or occurrence.
Centuries of Meditations
Centre and circumference
The centre is the middle point toward which distances or movements can be related; a circumference is the enclosing boundary of a circle.
Centuries of Meditations
Change
Change is becoming otherwise, whether in location, judgment, conduct, or condition.
Centuries of Meditations
Charity
Charity is Christian love directed toward the good of others.
Centuries of Meditations
Charles I
The king named in I.61 is Charles I, executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649.
Centuries of Meditations
Cherubim and seraphim
Cherubim and seraphim are angelic names.
Centuries of Meditations
Child and childhood
Childhood is the beginning of embodied and social life, but also a figure for a receptive, uncorrupted manner of seeing.
Centuries of Meditations
Childhood and youth
Youth names an early period of life after or alongside childhood.
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.