A reading is a short piece of text, often a single word or phrase, which typically varies between manuscripts, and for this reason will often be synonymous with a variant reading. The fact that a segment of text is called a reading may imply that it may be open to interpretation, i.e. that the word(s) in question can be read in more than one way.
In other languages
DE: Lesart
FR: leçon
IT: lezione
LAT: lectio
OH