All 3 Uses of
comprehend
in
The Adventures of Augie March
- Nevertheless, swollen and fire-eyed, slow on her feet, shouting incomprehensibly on the telephone, and her face as if lit by that gorgeous hair which finally advanced her into royalty, she somehow kept up with her duties.†
Chpt 2incomprehensibly = 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.
- You'll gaze on the riddle of the universe with comprehension!†
Chpt 25comprehension = the understanding of something
- She pounds the floor very rapidly and hard as she walks, but she is a person of sweet temper, though gossipy and with all kinds of incomprehensible social ambitions.†
Chpt 26 *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.
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."