All 16 Uses of
comprehend
in
Moby Dick
- The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension.†
Chpt 1-3
- I am no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension.†
Chpt 1-3
- But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning.†
Chpt 1-3
- I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this.†
Chpt 7-9
- Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar with his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.†
Chpt 10-12
- For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!†
Chpt 22-24 *
- First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all, both small and large.†
Chpt 31-33
- That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself!†
Chpt 37-39
- Nor is the pre-eminent tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale anywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows which stem him.†
Chpt 40-42
- Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form.†
Chpt 40-42
- Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will understand this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully comprehended when the mate uttered his command.†
Chpt 52-54
- But to comprehend it aright, you must know something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated upon.†
Chpt 76-78
- But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none?†
Chpt 85-87
- This was quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slid his solitary thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like sitting in the fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then giving the word, held himself fast, and at the same time also helped to hoist his own weight, by pulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running parts of the tackle.†
Chpt 100-102
- But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension of him, it behooves me now to unbutton him still further, and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton.†
Chpt 100-102
- How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood.†
Chpt 103-105
Definition:
-
(comprehend) to understand something -- especially to understand it completely