Both Uses of
comprehend
in
Nineteen Minutes
- When she told him what she craved, though, he could not comprehend.†
Chpt 1 *comprehend = understand -- especially to understand it completely
- In addition to the fact that there wasn't anything the prosecutor could ask her that hadn't been covered better by Maddie Shaw's father, he hadn't known how much more stress Lacy could take without being rendered incomprehensible on the stand.†
Chpt 2incomprehensible = 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."