meditation
n. C / Un. the act of spending time in quiet thought to relax your mind or for religious reasons. You do this to feel calm and focused.
n. the practice of focused contemplation or mental exercise, often involving controlled breathing, to achieve a state of mental clarity or spiritual tranquility.
Daily meditation helps me reduce stress after work.
The monk spent several hours in deep meditation every morning before the sun rose over the temple.
While often associated with spiritual traditions, secular forms of meditation have gained popularity in clinical settings as a method for managing chronic anxiety and improving emotional regulation.
From Old French meditacion, taken straight from Latin meditatio, which is the verbal noun of meditari, the past participle of meditari (“to think over, consider”). The Latin sits on a Proto-Indo-European root med- whose brief is simply “to measure, limit, consider, advise” — a semantic brief wide enough to account for both contemplative monks and surveyors.
Uncountable when referring to the practice in general; countable when referring to a specific session or a written piece of work.