All 3 Uses of
comprehend
in
Hiroshima, by John Hersey
- Under many houses, people screamed for help, but no one helped; in general, survivors that day assisted only their relatives or immediate neighbours, for they could not comprehend or tolerate a wider circle of misery.†
Chpt 2 *comprehend = understand -- especially to understand it completely
- Father Kleinsorge felt uneasy; he could not yet comprehend what he had been through; as if he were guilty of something awful, he felt he had to go back to the scene of the violence he had experienced.†
Chpt 3
- About a week after the bomb dropped, a vague, incomprehensible rumour reached Hiroshima — that the city had been destroyed by the energy released when atoms were somehow split in two.†
Chpt 3incomprehensible = 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.
Definition:
to understand something -- especially to understand it completely