Meaning of tradition in English

tradition

/trəˈdɪʃ.ən/ us

/trəˈdɪʃ.ən/

a belief, principle, or way of acting that people in a particular society or group have continued to follow for a long time, or all of these beliefs, etc. in a particular society or group:

Fireworks have long been an American tradition on the Fourth of July.

Switzerland has a long tradition of neutrality.

[ + that ] There's a tradition in our office that when it's somebody's birthday, they bring in a cake for all of us to share.

We decided to break with tradition (= not behave as usual) this year and go away for Christmas.

According to tradition, a headless ghost walks through the corridors of the house at night.

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This college has a long tradition of athletic excellence.
In keeping with tradition, they always have turkey on Christmas Day.
The old people in the village still observe the local traditions.
This tradition dates back to medieval times.
Daphne is carrying on the family tradition by becoming a lawyer.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Custom, tradition & conformity

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Idiom

in the tradition of someone/something

(Definition of tradition from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

tradition | American Dictionary

tradition

noun [ C/U ]

/trəˈdɪʃ·ən/

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a way of behaving or a belief that has been established for a long time, or the practice of following behavior and beliefs that have been so established:

[ C ] It is a western tradition for brides to wear white.

[ U ] The Dinka people are cattle-farmers by tradition.

(Definition of tradition from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of tradition

tradition

The zero plural avoids the problem of having two sibilants in quick succession at the end of the words, and coincidentally maintains the classical tradition.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Within the psychological tradition, hypothesis-testing models traditionally assume the former.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Our minimalist design tradition removes the intermediate and smaller scales from built form.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Similar representations of the social gender division can be found throughout the different cultural forms of the traditions surrounding birth and socialisation.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Symbolic meanings are constructed through historical traditions, articulated contextually and reproduced only in practice.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Ultimately, the end goals of the two religious traditions are synchronistic, but the differences may yet remain clear and distinct on the matter of process.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Ultimately, though, corpus-based empiricism must not lose touch with the theoretical linguistic tradition in the study of linguistic change.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The heuristics-and-biases tradition is most valuable as an answer to questions of whether, and how, we can improve decisions in the real world.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

It is within this tradition that oral history developed in the late 1960s.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

An oral tradition can and will adapt from one generation to the next, repeating its content in a form more readily accessible to the hearers.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Finding discrepancies between oral traditions and other sources does not negate the value of oral traditions as historical evidence.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The transmission of oral traditions depends on the social continuity of the group that finds meaning in telling those tales.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Instead, there may be important traditions of formal oratory and oral story telling, along with ritual and ceremony that have oral components.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The profound differences among the religious traditions are due to the different ways in which the transcendent reality is experienced and conceived in human life.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This brief overview demonstrates that there is no tradition of working with older people on housing design and management issues.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all examples of tradition

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with tradition

tradition

These are words often used in combination with tradition.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

age-old tradition

They have an age-old tradition as sailors, as mariners, as adventurers.

From the

Hansard archive

Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0

ancient tradition

Indeed, it has an ancient tradition.

From the

Hansard archive

Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0

architectural tradition

It is the core of an unbroken architectural tradition operating outside stylistic definitions.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all collocations with tradition

What is the pronunciation of tradition?

Translations of tradition

in Chinese (Traditional)

傳統…

Meaning of tradition in English

Idiom

tradition | American Dictionary

Examples of tradition

Collocations with tradition

tradition

Translations of tradition

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