- What is understanding?
- understanding and comprehensiveness
- Other uses of the term
- Examples of the use of the word "comprehension"
We explain what understanding is, what understanding means and other meanings of the term. Also, examples of use in sentences.
What is understanding?
Comprehension, from a very general point of view, is the action or the ability to know the meaning or the motivation of things. It is a word derived from the verb "to understand" and that has its roots in the Latin word I will understand, composed in turn by the prefix with– (“next to”) and voices prae ("before and I will split (“catch” or “hold”). In this way, understanding can be understood as the action of capturing "the before" of a thing, that is, of understanding where it comes from or what its reason for being is.
The word “understanding” is used in many contexts different, being the main one that has to do with the communication. When we communicate with someone, we are sending and receiving messages that must be grasped and understood, that is, understood.
That is why if they speak to us in another idiom (i.e. using a code that we do not know) or even if they speak to us in ours but in a very complicated, convoluted or strange way, we usually answer that "we have not understood". And in this sense to understand becomes a synonym for verbs such as to understand, to grasp and interpret.
The foregoing applies, naturally, both to the language spoken like the written one. The ability to understand a piece of writing depends on basic factors such as the language in which it is written, but also on the linguistic ability (that is, the level of language management) and the previous knowledge of the person reading it. That way, a person can read a cientific text, for example, written in a very technical language, and still not understand anything, that is, not being able to grasp the message.
On the other hand, people's reading comprehension is their ability to read and interpret a text, capturing the deepest layers of its meaning. The higher the understanding, the more levels of meaning can be grasped, while the lower the understanding, the person remains in the superficial layers of meaning.
understanding and comprehensiveness
The term "understanding" is also used in other situations, which have to do with putting oneself in another's shoes, or understanding or justifying the actions or decisions of others. Thus, for example, an understanding person is one who often puts himself in the place of others and who is willing in advance to listen and reason motivations foreign
In fact, when we face a dilemma and look for a friend who understands us, what we long for is precisely someone who understands our motivations and who puts himself in our place to help us make a decision.
In this sense, understanding is associated with empathy and the tolerance, rather than the intellectual capacity to decipher a message; and for that the word is usually used comprehensiveness, in order to distinguish empathy from rational and logical understanding.
Other uses of the term
The word understanding also has more technical and specialized uses, related to philosophy and the social Sciences. In this context it is used as a synonym for "interpret" or "intelligence", in the sense of a profound intellectual operation, and the German word is often used verstehen (precisely, "understand") to distinguish this specific sense in the texts of philosophy, history and other disciplines.
This meaning of understanding differs from the ordinary one, furthermore, in that it proposes an interpretive method, which pays attention to the internal aspects of the studied action, that is, to its purpose and intention, rather than to the objective features with which it is applied. usually associated with exact Sciences.
Examples of the use of the word "comprehension"
The following are some examples of the use of the word "understanding" in various sentences and contexts:
- Not my parents understand the predicament I'm in.
- The plot of that novel is impossible to understand.
- Me understand Miriam, I was in similar situations.
- ¿understand test instructions?
- I have no one to understand.