comprehension

[ kom-pri-hen-shuhn ]

noun

1. the act or process of comprehending.
2. the state of being comprehended.
3. perception or understanding:

   His comprehension of physics is amazing for a young student.

4. capacity of the mind to perceive and understand; power to grasp ideas; ability to know.
5. Logic. the connotation of a term.
6. inclusion.
7. comprehensiveness.

comprehension

/ ˌkɒmprɪˈhɛnʃən /

noun

1. the act or capacity of understanding
2. the state of including or comprising something; comprehensiveness
3. education an exercise consisting of a previously unseen passage of text with related questions, designed to test a student's understanding esp of a foreign language
4. obsolete.
   logic the attributes implied by a given concept or term; connotation

Other Words From

• miscom·pre·hension noun
• noncom·pre·hension noun
• precom·pre·hension noun
• super·compre·hension noun
• uncom·pre·hension noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of comprehension¹

First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English, from Latin comprehēnsiōn-, stem of comprehēnsiō, from comprehēns(us) “understood” (past participle of comprehendere “to understand,” literally, “to seize together”; comprehend ) + -iō -ion

Example Sentences

Other species would be able to think about and solve problems in ways that are outside our space of comprehension.

From Nautilus

The TI-84 Plus CE makes comprehension and mastery of math and science topics quicker, easier, lighter, and brighter with color graphing and a slim design.

From Popular-Science

Even today, chiaroscuro remains a powerful tool of discovery and comprehension.

From Nautilus

Below are some illustrations of its lack of comprehension—all, as we will see later, prefigured in an earlier critique that one of us wrote about GPT-3’s predecessor.

From MIT Technology Review

It certainly won’t help identify life beyond our own solar system, which could be completely beyond human comprehension, like the sentient ocean of plasma that the writer Stanisław Lem imagined in his 1961 novel Solaris.

From Quanta Magazine

It was a small step in learning to stick to my guns, but a leap in my comprehension of phonetics.

From The Daily Beast

To be clear, what Peterson (allegedly) did is abhorrent and almost beyond comprehension.

From The Daily Beast

To do so in a Salvadoran prison defies comprehension and inspires respect for their grit and determination.

From The Daily Beast

Nothing defeats my powers of comprehension like the deliberate harm of a child.

From The Daily Beast

This is nostalgia as a recording exercise rather than a lesson in empathy or comprehension.

From The Daily Beast

She has embodied in her work a modern comprehension of old legends.

From Project Gutenberg

It is beyond the comprehension of any man not blinded by superstition, not warped by prejudice and old-time convention.

From Project Gutenberg

This is given in the next few pages, and it will be found to be easy of comprehension and interesting to a surprising degree.

From Project Gutenberg

The mysterious letter was handed round our circle in succession, and seemed equally beyond comprehension to us all.

From Project Gutenberg

To Madame Ratignolle he said the music dispensed at her soirees was too "heavy," too far beyond his untrained comprehension.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• apprehension
• awareness