comprehend

Verb

comprehend (third-person singular simple present comprehends, present participle comprehending, simple past and past participle comprehended)

1. (transitive) To understand or grasp fully and thoroughly; to plumb.
   • I just can't comprehend how someone could be a butcher and vegetarian at the same time.
   • Our ſoules, whoſe faculties can comprehend
     The wondrous Architecture of the world:
     And meaſure euery wandring planets courſe,
     Still climing after knowledge infinite, […]c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...

   Synonyms:

   see

2. (archaic) To include, comprise; to contain.
   • And lothly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee, / That nought but gall and venim comprehended […].1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
   • The King being resolved to have a Peace concluded at any Rate, sent us at last to Monsieur des Farges, who would hearken to no Treaty, without allowing us the benefit of being comprehended in it, by which means our liberty was obtain'd.1690, “A diary of one of the French officers that served at Morgen under the command of Monsieur de Bruham, containing several particulars relating to the former discourse”, in A Full and True...