comprehend

English

Etymology

From Middle English comprehenden, from Latin comprehendere (“to grasp”), from the prefix com- + prehendere (“to seize”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kɒmpɹɪˈhɛnd/
• (US) IPA^(key): /kɑmpɹɪˈhɛnd/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛnd

Verb

comprehend (third-person singular simple present comprehends, present participle comprehending, simple past and past participle comprehended)

1. (now rare) To include, comprise; to contain.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     And lothly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee, / That nought but gall and venim comprehended […].

   • 1776, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Penguin, published 2009, page 9:

     In the second century of the Christian Æra, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.

2. To understand or grasp fully and thoroughly.
   • c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. The First Part , 2nd edition, part 1, London: Richard Iones, , published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act II, scene vii:

     Our ſoules, whoſe faculties can comprehend
     The wondrous Architecture of the world:
     And meaſure euery wandring planets courſe,
     Still climing after knowledge infinite, […]

Related terms

Translations

French

Verb

comprehend

1. third-person singular present indicative of comprehendre