All 8 Uses
comprehend
in
A Tale of Two Cities
(Auto-generated)
- My credentials, entries, and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, 'Recalled to Life;' which may mean anything.†
Chpt 1.4 *comprehended = understood completely
- While one external cause, and that a reference to his long lingering agony, would always—as on the trial—evoke this condition from the depths of his soul, it was also in its nature to arise of itself, and to draw a gloom over him, as incomprehensible to those unacquainted with his story as if they had seen the shadow of the actual Bastille thrown upon him by a summer sun, when the substance was three hundred miles away.†
Chpt 2.4incomprehensible = not understandablestandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in incomprehensible means not and reverses the meaning of comprehensible. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- Your unselfishness cannot entirely comprehend how much my mind has gone on this; but, only ask yourself, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete?†
Chpt 2.17comprehend = understand -- especially to understand it completely
- So far as it was possible to comprehend him without overstepping those delicate and gradual approaches which Mr. Lorry felt to be the only safe advance, he at first supposed that his daughter's marriage had taken place yesterday.†
Chpt 2.19
- "Upon my life," said Carton, smiling, "I find that easier to comprehend in my own mind, than to convey to yours.†
Chpt 2.20
- He had fully comprehended that no personal influence could possibly save him, that he was virtually sentenced by the millions, and that units could avail him nothing.†
Chpt 3.13comprehended = understood completely
- "'If you remember,'" said Carton, dictating, "'the words that passed between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see it.†
Chpt 3.13comprehend = understand -- especially to understand it completely
- This was a courage that Madame Defarge so little comprehended as to mistake for weakness.†
Chpt 3.14comprehended = understood completely
Definitions:
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(1)
(comprehend) to understand something -- especially to understand it completely
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Much more rarely (and more frequently in the past), comprehend can mean to include as part of something broader. That was the first sense of the word listed in Webster's Dictionary of 1828 with this sample sentence: "The empire of Great Britain comprehends England, Scotland and Ireland, with their dependencies."