Logos

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Philosophy In pre-Socratic philosophy, the principle governing the cosmos, the source of this principle, or human reasoning about the cosmos.
2. n. Philosophy Among the Sophists, the topics of rational argument or the arguments themselves.
3. n. Philosophy In Stoicism, the active, material, rational principle of the cosmos; nous. Identified with God, it is the source of all activity and generation and is the power of reason residing in the human soul.
4. n. Judaism In biblical Judaism, the word of God, which itself has creative power and is God's medium of communication with the human race.
5. n. Judaism In Hellenistic Judaism, a hypostasis associated with divine wisdom.
6. n. Christianity In Saint John's Gospel, especially in the prologue (1:1-14), the creative word of God, which is itself God and incarnate in Jesus. Also called Word.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In theology, the Divine Word; the transcendent Divine Reason as expressed in a distinct personality; the Second Person in the Trinity, both before and after the incarnation: so called as expressing God both to God himself and to his creatures, as language expresses reason and as reason is expressed by language. The word Logos (λόγος) is used by Plato of reason as a manifestation of or emanation from the Supreme Being. Philo Judæus, using ideas and language partly Platonic and partly scriptural, derived especially from the Sapiential books, developed these in a form that suggests the Christian doctrine of the Logos. St. John, especially in the first chapter of his Gospel, first distinctly gives the Christian doctrine, assigning distinct personality to the Logos. Some early Christian writers distinguish between the Logos as immanent (Λόγος ἐνδιάθετος), or the Divine Reason still remaining in the bosom of the Father, and the Logos as uttered (Λόγος προφορικός), or the Word sent forth to the world.
2. n. In the philosophy of Heraclitus and the Stoics, the rational principle that governs and develops the universe.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A word; reason; speech.
2. n. The divine Word; Christ.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the divine word of God; the second person in the Trinity (incarnate in Jesus)