DictionaryAI

tradition

truh-DISH-uhn/tɹəˈdɪʃn̩/

Pluraltraditions

5 meanings of tradition

Practice

  1. 1
    nouncountable
    An element of culture passed from person to person or generation to generation, often varying in detail between families, such as ways of celebrating holidays.

    The village preserves a midsummer tradition that dates back centuries.

    Each generation reshapes the tradition slightly to fit its own time.

    Similarcustom, practice, ritual, convention, observance

    Note

    Beneath the everyday sense lies a picture of handing on, and T. S. Eliot leans on it in 1920 when he glosses tradition as "handing down." The word reached English through Old French from Latin trāditiō, and it is a doublet of treason: one Latin source, two English words. Use it as a countable noun for a single custom (a family tradition) and as an uncountable one for the inheritance as a whole (bound by tradition).

  2. 2
    nouncountable
    An established or distinctive style or method, especially one associated with a particular school, place, or body of practice.

    Her paintings belong to the tradition of European landscape art.

    The firm built its reputation in the tradition of meticulous craftsmanship.

    Similarschool, style, manner, vein

  3. 3
    nouncountable or uncountable
    A system of belief, idea, or practice held in common by many people.

    Western philosophical tradition traces many ideas back to ancient Greece.

    The legal tradition of this country rests on centuries of precedent.

    Similarheritage, legacy

  4. 4
    noununcountable
    The act of delivering something into the hands of another; the handing over of property or goods.

    In Roman law, ownership transferred through the tradition of the thing sold.

    The contract specified that tradition of the deeds would finalize the transfer.

    Similardelivery, handover, conveyance

    Note

    Law keeps the literal meaning alive: tradition as the physical handing over of a thing. In civil law, following the Roman concept of traditio, ownership passes when the thing itself is delivered. William Blackstone pairs the word with its plain equivalent in "this tradition or delivery," and he dates a deed's effect from that moment of handing over. Outside legal writing, delivery or transfer is the word to use.

Less common meaning

  1. 5
    verbobsolete
    To transmit something by way of tradition; to hand it down from one generation to another.

    The monks traditioned their teachings carefully from one age to the next.

    Priests would tradition the sacred rites to their chosen successors.

    Note

    A verb that has fallen out of use, conjugated like any regular verb: traditions, traditioning, traditioned. Thomas Fuller uses it in the passive in 1655, describing a story "traditioned with very much credit" among English Catholics. Today the idea is carried by hand down or pass down, or by recasting the sentence around the noun: a story preserved by tradition. Reach for the verb only when imitating period prose.

Practice

Can you tell the meanings of tradition apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.

Origin

It comes from Middle English tradicioun, from Old French tradicion, from Latin trāditiō, which is from the verb trādō. It is a doublet of "treason."