Words · Meanings · Passages
Traherne Lexicon
A Reader’s Companion to Centuries of Meditations
471 entries · 0 subsidiary termsEntries
289–324 of 471
Mistake
A mistake is an erroneous apprehension or application.
Centuries of Meditations
Monuments
A monument may be a commemorative structure, but monuments can also be records or writings that preserve knowledge.
Centuries of Meditations
Moses
Moses is the scriptural leader of Israel.
Centuries of Meditations
Motion
Motion includes bodily movement and, by extension, the activity of affection or inward response.
Centuries of Meditations
Music
Music denotes ordered sound and the art that produces it.
Centuries of Meditations
Mystery
Mystery is a truth or divine purpose previously hidden or not yet rightly understood.
Centuries of Meditations
Nakedness
Nakedness is the absence of clothing.
Centuries of Meditations
Nature
Nature can mean the created order, the characteristic constitution of a being, or the native tendencies through which that being approaches its proper good.
Centuries of Meditations
Necessity
Necessity can mean an unavoidable consequence, a requirement of a nature or end, or a practical want that must be supplied.
Centuries of Meditations
Need
Want can name a lack, the felt need arising from it, or an active desire.
Centuries of Meditations
News
News is information of something newly disclosed or brought from afar.
Centuries of Meditations
Nothingness
Nothing can deny existence, value, or a specified content.
Centuries of Meditations
Obedience
Obedience is conformity of action to an authoritative command.
Centuries of Meditations
Object
An object is what thought, sight, desire, or another power is directed toward.
Centuries of Meditations
Obligation
Obligation is what binds one to a response or duty.
Centuries of Meditations
Omnipotence
Omnipotence is unlimited divine power.
Centuries of Meditations
Omnipresence
Omnipresence is God’s presence everywhere.
Centuries of Meditations
Order
Order is an arrangement in which things occupy fitting relations; to order is to direct or dispose something toward its proper end.
Centuries of Meditations
Orient
Orient means brilliant, lustrous, or radiantly precious, carrying associations of the rising sun and fine jewels.
Centuries of Meditations
Original sin
Original sin names humanity’s fallen condition as related to Adam, distinguished from actual sins committed in particular acts.
Centuries of Meditations
Ornament
An ornament adorns and lends distinction.
Centuries of Meditations
Pain
Pain denotes bodily or inward suffering.
Centuries of Meditations
Paradise
Paradise names the original blessed habitation and, by extension, a present manner of inhabiting the world in knowledge, charity, and enjoyment.
Centuries of Meditations
Parents
Parents are those who beget and raise children.
Centuries of Meditations
Passion
Passion may denote suffering, especially Christ’s suffering, or the movements of feeling and desire that require government.
Centuries of Meditations
Patience
Patience is the capacity to bear difficulty, deprivation, or delay without abandoning the good.
Centuries of Meditations
Peace
Peace is the absence of destructive conflict and the positive repose of rightly ordered relations.
Centuries of Meditations
Peculiar
Peculiar means specially one’s own, proper to a person, or privately belonging.
Centuries of Meditations
Perfection
Perfection is completeness or fulfilment according to a thing’s nature and end.
Centuries of Meditations
Person
Person ordinarily names a particular human or spiritual being.
Centuries of Meditations
Philosophy
Philosophy is disciplined inquiry into wisdom, nature, and the good life.
Centuries of Meditations
Phocion
Phocion was an Athenian general and statesman, dated approximately 402–318 BC in the supplied edition, and remembered for honest poverty.
Centuries of Meditations
Phoenix
The phoenix is the fabulous bird associated with singular rarity and renewal through death.
Centuries of Meditations
Pico della Mirandola
Picus Mirandula is Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the Renaissance writer whose oration on human dignity Traherne renders and then comments upon.
Centuries of Meditations
Picture
A picture is a made representation.
Centuries of Meditations
Piety
Piety is reverent devotion expressed in belief and conduct.
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.