Noun

Singular tradition

Plural traditions

tradition (plural traditions)

1. A part of culture that is passed from person to person or generation to generation, possibly differing in detail from family to family, such as the way to celebrate holidays.
   • 1920, T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, in The Sacred Wood:

     Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, "tradition" should positively be discouraged.

   • 1850, Charles Dickens, A Christmas Tree:

     After breakfast, Charles Macdoodle told Lady Mary that it was a tradition in the family that those rumbling carriages on the terrace betokened death.

2. A commonly held system.

Derived terms

• traditional
• traditionally
• traditionalism

The word tradition comes from the Latin traditionem, acc. of traditio which means "handing over, passing on", and is used in a number of ways in the English language:

1. Beliefs or customs taught by one generation to the next, often orally. For example, we can speak of the tradition of sending birth announcements.
2. A set of customs or practices. For example, we can speak of Christmas traditions.
3. A broad religious movement made up of religious denominations or church bodies that have a common history, customs, culture, and, to some extent, body of teachings. For example, one can speak of Islam's Sufi tradition or Christianity's Lutheran tradition.

However, on a more basic theoretical level, tradition(s) can be seen as information or composed of information. For that which is brought into the present from the past, in a particular societal context, is information. This is even more fundamental than particular acts or practices even if repeated over a long sequence of time.