All 4 Uses of
comprehend
in
The Bourne Supremacy
- You insist on keeping secrets because the Zhongguo ren are inferior; they cannot comprehend.†
Chpt 11 *comprehend = understand -- especially to understand it completely
- Then you can comprehend the solution I found for myself, for the last days of an older man.†
Chpt 16
- To be held for questioning by the police in a foreign country was frightening for anyone, but it became terrifying when an incomprehensible language and radically different faces were added to the knowledge that the prisoner was in a country where people frequently disappeared without explanation.†
Chpt 24incomprehensible = 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.
- What they saw was a reality they could not contend with or comprehend.†
Chpt 28comprehend = understand -- especially to understand it completely
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."