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

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kɒmpɹɪˈhɛnd/
• (US, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˌkɑmpɹɪˈhɛnd/

  • Audio (US):

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• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /kɔmpɹɪˈhend/
• Rhymes: -ɛnd

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

1. (transitive) To understand or grasp fully and thoroughly; to plumb

   Synonym: see

   I just can't comprehend how someone could be a butcher and vegetarian at the same time.

   • c. 1587–1588, , 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,

2. (now rare) To include, comprise; to contain.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: ">…] 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.

comprehend

1. third-person singular present indicative of comprehendre