Recension

/ɹɪˈsɛnʃən/ · noun

Meaning

A census, an enumeration, a review, a survey..

Definitions by Sense

1. A census, an enumeration, a review, a survey.
2. A critical revision of a text.
3. A text established by critical revision.
4. A family of manuscripts which share similar traits; the variety of a language which is used in such manuscripts.

Example Sentences

The recenſion of the inhabitants is conſidered, firſt, 'with reſpect to the general population, and to the local diſtribution of them into counties, towns, boroughs, villages, and pariſhes.' Among the conveniences expected from ſuch an annual recenſion, it is obſerved, that 'one might ſee what counties, towns, or pariſhes, diſpeopled faſteſt, or made a contrary progreſs.[…]'

Of Theon of Alexandria, there remain a recension of Euclid's Elements, Scholia on Aratus, and a Commentary on the Syntaxis of Ptolemy.

That this text is evidently a more antient recension of the same Syriac Gospel of St. Matthew, which, so far as we have the means of tracing it, appears to have been always in use in the Syriac canon, and that the variations in the subsequent recension, called the Peshito, have arisen from comparison with the Greek, by which it has been modified and brought in many places into closer conformity with the Greek; […]

And so in different recensions, different poems will appear in different places.

Since the 1895 text edition of Bensly–James, it has been recognized that each of the three parts of the 2 Esdras corpus exists in two distinct textual recensions. In each work, the two recensions divide along the lines of the same manuscripts: mss S and A consistently manifest a recension labeled by James the 'French', while the remaining mss CMNEVL show a recension that James called the 'Spanish'.

The Śatapatha-Bráhmaṇa has been commented in the Mádhyaṃdina recension by Harisvámin and Sáyaṇa; but their commentaries are so far extant only in a fragmentary form. The Vṛihad-Áraṇyaka has been explained by Dviveda Gan̄ga (of Gujarát); and in the Káṇva recension by Śaṃkara, to whose commentary a number of other works by his pupils, &c., attach themselves.

The first to publish a complete translation of any Recension of the Book of the Dead was [Samuel] Birch, who in 1867 gave an English version of the Turin papyrus in the fifth volume of [Christian Charles Josias von] Bunsen, Egypt's Place in the Universal History, pp. 123–333. Notwithstanding the fact that the Recension here translated is the Saïte or latest of all, and that the text of the Turin MS. is faulty in many places, Birch's rendering gave a new impulse to the study of the Egyptian religion, and it has formed the groundwork of the translations made by Egyptologists subsequently.

The existence of two major literary centres in the First Bulgarian Empire led to the emergence of two recensions of Old Church Slavonic: the Bulgarian Recension and the Macedonian Recension.

Synonyms for recension

Antonyms for recension

Related Words

Word Forms

• recensions

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

Practice and Learn More

Frequently Asked Questions