All 3 Uses of
comprehend
in
Me Before You
- They looked at me with faint distaste—or perhaps even incomprehension—no doubt weighing up my fat-to-muscle ratio and finding it wanting.†
p. 60.3incomprehension = lack of understanding of somethingstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in incomprehension means not and reverses the meaning of comprehension. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- After a fortnight of rejections, he and Mum admitted they would have to apply for benefits, just to tide them over, and spent their evenings poring over incomprehensible fifty-page forms that asked how many people used their washing machine, and when was the last time they had left the country (Dad thought it might have been 1988).†
p. 209.8 *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.
- And then, as I stood, dumbly struggling to comprehend, he added, "It's only at weekends.†
p. 219.9comprehend = understand -- especially to understand it completely
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."