Words · Meanings · Passages
Traherne Lexicon
A Reader’s Companion to Centuries of Meditations
471 entries · 0 subsidiary termsEntries
217–252 of 471
Hell
Hell names the state of punishment and separation from blessed enjoyment.
Centuries of Meditations
Help
Help is assistance toward another’s need or good.
Centuries of Meditations
Hermes Trismegistus
Mercurius Trismegistus is the Latin form of Hermes Trismegistus, the sage to whom Hermetic writings were traditionally attributed.
Centuries of Meditations
Hidden
A secret is something hidden from ordinary knowledge.
Centuries of Meditations
Holiness
Holiness names a life set in right relation to God and conformed to his goodness.
Centuries of Meditations
Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, named also Holy Ghost and Comforter.
Centuries of Meditations
Honor
Honour is the recognition or treatment appropriate to worth.
Centuries of Meditations
Hope
Hope is an anticipatory relation to good not yet fully possessed.
Centuries of Meditations
Human being
Man often denotes the human creature generally, and mankind the human community.
Centuries of Meditations
Humanity
Humanity here names a field of learning concerned with human nature, its faculties, desires, ends, and happiness.
Centuries of Meditations
Humility
Humility is freedom from self-exalting pride and a truthful acknowledgement of dependence or fault.
Centuries of Meditations
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is a false appearance of goodness or conformity presented to secure approval.
Centuries of Meditations
Hypostatic union
A hypostatic union is a union at the level of person.
Centuries of Meditations
Ignorance
Ignorance is the absence of knowledge, but its value depends on what is not known and how that absence operates.
Centuries of Meditations
Illustrate
To illustrate can mean to make illustrious, illuminate with splendour, or shed glory upon.
Centuries of Meditations
Image
An image represents or resembles an original.
Centuries of Meditations
Imagination
Imagination is the power or activity of making something present to thought when it is not immediately supplied by the senses.
Centuries of Meditations
Immortality
Immortality is exemption from death or the enduring life to which a person is destined.
Centuries of Meditations
Impertinence
Impertinence means irrelevance: something that does not pertain to the matter or end in question.
Centuries of Meditations
Implicit faith and assurance
Implicit faith here is trust whose grounds and contents are not yet fully understood.
Centuries of Meditations
Impression and stamp
An impression is a mark made upon a surface, and by extension a durable effect upon the mind or affections.
Centuries of Meditations
In-being and objective presence
In-being means a thing’s manner of being in something else.
Centuries of Meditations
Incarnation
Incarnation names the Son’s assumption of human life.
Centuries of Meditations
Inclination and tendency
An inclination is a natural leaning or tendency of the soul toward an object or end, prior to its complete direction by judgment.
Centuries of Meditations
Inconvenient
Inconvenient can mean unfitting, unsuitable, or inconsistent with the nature and purpose of something.
Centuries of Meditations
Individually
Individually here means indivisibly or inseparably, rather than separately, one person at a time.
Centuries of Meditations
Infancy
Infancy denotes the earliest stage of life.
Centuries of Meditations
Infinite
Infinity signifies absence of limit.
Centuries of Meditations
Influence
Influence retains the older image of a power flowing from the heavens, especially from stars, into earthly life.
Centuries of Meditations
Ingratitude
Ingratitude is failure to recognize or answer a benefit.
Centuries of Meditations
Innocence
Innocence denotes freedom from sin or corruption.
Centuries of Meditations
Insatiableness
Insatiableness is an appetite or capacity that finite acquisitions cannot finally fill.
Centuries of Meditations
Interest
Interest can mean a share in something, a concern that affects one, or an advantage pursued.
Centuries of Meditations
Interminable
Interminable means boundless or without an ending or limit.
Centuries of Meditations
Intuition
Intuition is an immediate apprehension, a knowing that does not proceed through an articulated chain of reasoning.
Centuries of Meditations
Invention
Invention is something devised by human wit.
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.