Both Uses of
comprehend
in
Black Like Me
- I recall scenes picked at random: The look of growing concern and perhaps humiliation on photographer Don Rutledge's face as we moved from one scene to another—concern and humiliation to realize that these men, these scenes, these ideals were unknown to most Americans and utterly beyond the comprehension of the Southern racist.†
comprehension = the understanding of something
- They and many, many others acted with a bravery and heroism almost incomprehensible to most men.†
*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
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(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."