Both Uses of
comprehend
in
Lonesome Dove
- They were just rooting around a cabin and not trying to harm him, yet he woke in a terrible fright and saw something incomprehensible.†
Chpt 58-59 *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.
- For a while she had just stared back at him without comprehension when he spoke to her.†
Chpt 79-80comprehension = the understanding of something
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."