All 9 Uses of
comprehend
in
The Age of Innocence
- In the centre of this enchanted garden Madame Nilsson, in white cashmere slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue girdle, and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to M. Capoul's impassioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his designs whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively indicated the ground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely from the right wing.†
Chpt 1incomprehension = lack of understanding of somethingstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in incomprehension means not and reverses the meaning of comprehension. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- She met his glance comprehendingly.†
Chpt 3
- They preferred those about peasant life, because of the descriptions of scenery and the pleasanter sentiments, though in general they liked novels about people in society, whose motives and habits were more comprehensible, spoke severely of Dickens, who "had never drawn a gentleman," and considered Thackeray less at home in the great world than Bulwer—who, however, was beginning to be thought old-fashioned.†
Chpt 5
- She welcomed him with all her white teeth, and answering his enquiries by a head-shake of incomprehension led him through the narrow hall into a low firelit drawing-room.†
Chpt 9incomprehension = lack of understanding of somethingstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in incomprehension means not and reverses the meaning of comprehension. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- But Mrs. Carfry and her sister, to whom this point of view was unknown, and who would have found it utterly incomprehensible, felt themselves linked by an eternal gratitude to the "delightful Americans" who had been so kind at Botzen.†
Chpt 20 *incomprehensible = 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.
- He saw in a flash that if the family had ceased to consult him it was because some deep tribal instinct warned them that he was no longer on their side; and he recalled, with a start of comprehension, a remark of May's during their drive home from Mrs. Manson Mingott's on the day of the Archery Meeting: "Perhaps, after all, Ellen would be happier with her husband."†
Chpt 25comprehension = the understanding of something
- They had simply, as Mrs. Welland said, "let poor Ellen find her own level"—and that, mortifyingly and incomprehensibly, was in the dim depths where the Blenkers prevailed, and "people who wrote" celebrated their untidy rites.†
Chpt 26incomprehensibly = in a manner that cannot be understoodstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in incomprehensibly means not and reverses the meaning of comprehensibly. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- May gave him a glance of comprehension, and he saw her whisper to his mother, who nodded sympathetically; then she murmured an excuse to Mrs. van der Luyden, and rose from her seat just as Marguerite fell into Faust's arms.†
Chpt 32comprehension = the understanding of something
- It recalled Janey's midnight fright when she had caught him rocking with incomprehensible mirth over May's telegram announcing that the date of their marriage had been advanced.†
Chpt 32incomprehensible = 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.
Definitions:
-
(1)
(comprehend) to understand something -- especially to understand it completely
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) 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."