Words · Meanings · Passages
Lexicon
Terms from the books in the Diotimos library, with definitions, translation notes, and links to their passages.
4,297 entries across 21 collectionsEntries
217–252 of 2,960
Auspicious speech
Euphēmia is auspicious or good-omened speech, including the restraint or silence required to prevent ill-omened words in worship.
Alcibiades II · Hipparchus
Austere composition
Ἁρμονία here is an arrangement or mode of verbal composition, not automatically the cosmic harmony of a physical theory.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Austere taste
Austēros can describe an austere, dry, or rough taste.
Stobaeus, Volume I
Authenticity of books
A book's authority is conditional upon its agreement with the appropriate ground of truth.
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum
Author
Auteur usually names an originating writer, but can extend to a progenitor; écrivain specifically concerns writing.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Authority
Autorité concerns the weight of a person, office or tradition in directing judgment.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II · Centuries of Meditations
Authorship and attribution
Authorship asks who composed the dialogue; attribution is its transmission under Plato’s name.
Alcibiades I · Alcibiades II+1 book
Autobiography and Self-Examination
To lay the heart bare is to promise access to inward life.
Intimate Journals
Autumn
Autumn is registered through mist, earlier darkness, pale woodland colour, and leaves beginning to fall.
The Green Notebook · René
Avicenna
Avicenna is invoked both as a transmitter of a disputed Aristotle saying and as a witness to the truth found by returning to natural principles.
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum
Avicenna’s imagined adult
Ficta means imagined or devised in this thought experiment, not necessarily deceitful.
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II
Awakening
Awakening is a passage from sleep or inattention into active awareness.
Centuries of Meditations
Awareness and apprehension
Antilēpsis is apprehension or taking cognizance of something.
Stobaeus, Volume I
Axiom
An axiom declares what appears most true and can guide demonstration.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Axis
Axōn is an axle or axis.
Stobaeus, Volume I
Azazel and the cabalistic witnesses
Azazel appears in the Latin threat on p. 147 as the subdelegate of avenging IEHOVAH.
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum
Azoth
Azoth names the philosophical Mercury in its pri-material catholic use, especially as purified, living mercurial matter.
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum
Babbling and self-deprecation
Ληρεῖν is to talk nonsense, and λῆρος is nonsense or trash; φαῦλος is ordinary, and so poor, and a ζητητής is one who seeks.
Charmides
Babel
Babel evokes the biblical association of human building with confusion.
Centuries of Meditations
Bacchus and the Muses
The paired names identify knowing and life-giving powers within cosmic souls.
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I
Bacon and bait
Bacon on the trap is Khunrath's surprisingly frank explanation of why philosophers speak so much about transmutation.
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum
Bad taste
Bad taste becomes attractive when it can be willed as a breach of expected approval.
Intimate Journals
Balance and proportion
A balance weighs; proportion expresses a fitting relation between quantities, powers, or ends.
Centuries of Meditations
Balgus
Balgus is the named speaker credited with a saying in the Turba: understanding the regimen exceeds reason unless divine inspiration gives it.
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum
Baptism
Baptism here is approached through the scriptural verb for baptizing with fire.
Centuries of Meditations
Barbarinus and Barbarus
This is the named interlocutor in Bernard's reported account of knowing the Art before personally completing the work.
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum
Barley-meal and water
B34 preserves a participial phrase about gluing barley-meal with water.
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Basile
Basile was a local Athenian goddess, worshipped together with two figures of Athens' royal legend, King Codrus and Neleus; her name is a rare word for "queen".
Charmides
Basket bearing and the sister
Κανηφορία is basket-bearing, the ceremonial carrying of a basket in a procession.
Hipparchus
Battle-Din
Kydoimos is battle-noise or warlike tumult, personified in the list at B128.
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Baubo
Βαυβώ is the word indexed under B153.
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Beam in the sky
Dokis is a beam, here a name for an elongated luminous appearance.
Stobaeus, Volume I
Beans
Kyamos is a bean; the printed plural genitive belongs to the command to keep one's hands away.
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Beatific vision
Beatific means making blessed or happy.
Centuries of Meditations
Beauty
Καλός is beautiful of a body and fine of an act, work or thing; κάλλος is beauty, καλῶς "finely" or "well", and the opposite, αἰσχρός, "ugly" and "shameful".
Charmides · Alcibiades I+9 books
Because of
Dia means through; with the accusative, because of or on account of.
Lysis
Books in the Lexicon
October 2026
Plato’s Alcibiades I Lexicon
Alcibiades I · Plato
176 entries · 701 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Plato’s Alcibiades II Lexicon
Alcibiades II · Plato
94 entries · 290 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Traherne Lexicon
Centuries of Meditations · Thomas Traherne
471 entries · 0 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Plato’s Charmides Lexicon
Charmides · Plato
173 entries · 777 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Empedocles Lexicon
Empedocles, Volumes I–II · Empedocles of Acragas
490 entries · 0 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Plato’s Epinomis Lexicon
Epinomis · Plato
77 entries · 1,061 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Flatland Literary Lexicon
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions · Edwin A. Abbott
85 entries · 476 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Khunrath Lexicon
Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum · Heinrich Khunrath
326 entries · 0 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Plato’s Hipparchus Lexicon
Hipparchus · Plato
90 entries · 291 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Baudelaire Literary Lexicon
Intimate Journals · Charles Baudelaire
80 entries · 323 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Plato’s Lysis Lexicon
Lysis · Plato
239 entries · 0 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I Lexicon
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I · Marsilio Ficino
231 entries · 1,313 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II Lexicon
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II · Marsilio Ficino
148 entries · 1,398 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Plato’s Minos Lexicon
Minos · Plato
54 entries · 506 subsidiary terms
October 2026
René Literary Lexicon
René · François-René de Chateaubriand
81 entries · 275 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Stobaeus Lexicon
Stobaeus, Volume I · John Stobaeus
610 entries · 85 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy Lexicon
The Anatomy of Melancholy · Robert Burton
103 entries · 3,864 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Guérin Lexicon
The Green Notebook · Maurice de Guérin
165 entries · 0 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Plato’s Lovers Lexicon
The Lovers · Plato
83 entries · 361 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Joubert Lexicon
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II · Joseph Joubert
459 entries · 110 subsidiary terms
October 2026
Plato’s Theages Lexicon
Theages · Plato
62 entries · 510 subsidiary terms