All 5 Uses of
fathom
in
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- And the more I try to fathom what makes me enjoy mechanical work and them hate it so, the more elusive it becomes.†
Part 1 *fathom = come to understand
- Fathomless!†
Part 3fathomless = impossible to understandstandard suffix: The suffix "-less" in fathomless means without and reverses the meaning of fathom. This is the same pattern you see in words like harmless, fearless, and powerless.
- He tried to fathom more deeply what had happened.†
Part 3fathom = come to understand
- The effort of fathoming what is in another's mind creates a distortion of what is seen.†
Part 3fathoming = coming to understand
- Coastal people never really know what the ocean symbolizes to landlocked inland people...what a great distant dream it is, present but unseen in the deepest levels of subconsciousness, and when they arrive at the ocean and the conscious images are compared with the subconscious dream there is a sense of defeat at having come so far to be so stopped by a mystery that can never be fathomed.†
Part 4fathomed = came to understand
Definitions:
-
(1)
(fathom as in: can't fathom) to come to understand
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Fathom can also refer to a unit of measure for water depth (6 feet), or to the act of measuring the depth of water.