UNDERSTAND • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Understand

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/ˌəndərstˈænd/ Listen

verb

Understand v. t. (past & past part. understood, archaic understanded; pres. part. understanding)

To have just and adequate ideas of; to apprehended the meaning or intention of; to have knowledge of; to comprehend; to know; as, to understand a problem in Euclid; to understand a proposition or a declaration; the court understands the advocate or his argument; to understand the sacred oracles; to understand a nod or a wink. "Speaketh (i. e., speak thou) so plain at this time, I you pray, That we may understande what ye say." "I understand not what you mean by this." "Understood not all was but a show." "A tongue not understanded of the people."

To be apprised, or have information, of; to learn; to be informed of; to hear; as, I understand that Congress has passed the bill.

To recognize or hold as being or signifying; to suppose to mean; to interpret; to explain. "The most learned interpreters understood the words of sin, and not of Abel."

To mean without expressing; to imply tacitly; to take for granted; to assume. "War, then, war, Open or understood, must be resolved."

To stand under; to support. (Jocose & R.)

To give one to understand, to cause one to know.

To make one's self understood, to make one's meaning clear.

Understand v. i. (past & past part. understood, archaic understanded; pres. part. understanding)

To have the use of the intellectual faculties; to be an intelligent being. "Imparadised in you, in whom alone I understand, and grow, and see."

To be informed; to have or receive knowledge. "I came to Jerusalem, and understood of the evil that Eliashib did for Tobiah."

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Etymology of 'Understand'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Understand" Quotes from Famous Books

... had trodden on a corn he has; and I knew at once it was the face I had looked for and longed for all my life and had found at last; and I loved him from the first and we went out of the crowd and talked. Well, now; I clung to him in all our happy, happy months together, in a way you can never understand, because I loved him, and because I am not the sort that men like because I am only plain, and I knew that if ever he left me I could never get another. Well, now; you have taken him away from me. You could get dozens and dozens ...

— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... should be open; the Parliament in revising the Constitution introduced the ballot. He gave his consent with much reluctance; voting seemed to him to be a public duty, and to perform it in secret was to undermine the roots of political life. He was a man who was constitutionally unable to understand fear. We have then the Council and the Parliament, and we must now enquire as to their duties. In nearly every modern State the popular representative assembly holds the real power; before it, everything else is humbled; the chief occupation of lawgivers ...

— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... thin, prim-looking, rather plain children; but Oliver was the very picture of a father's darling, a boy that any childless man would bitterly covet, any childless woman crave and yearn for, with a longing that women alone can understand; a child who, beautiful as most childhood is, had a beauty you rarely see— bright, frank, merry, bold; half a Bacchus and half a Cupid, he was a perfect image of the Golden Age. Though three years old, he was evidently ...

— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... will go to Marseilles,' said Dantes,—for you understand, I repeat his words just as he uttered ...

— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... in the faces o' their families in such matters, an' I told Florence so one day when she had dropped in fer a drink o' buttermilk. She just took my hands in hers, an', lookin' me in the eye, said, 'Mrs. McVeigh, ye do not understand. He is a fine, strong man, an' will take me away to the city, where my sisters can't make my life a burden. They are like ye, and doubt the worth o' him, but I have had more chance than any o' ye to study his character, ...

— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer

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