a comprendt

An obsolete variant of comprehend. Chaucer. 4. Capacity of the mind to understand; power of the understanding to receive and contain ideas; ability to know. How much soever any truths may seem above our understanding and comprehension. Bp. Beveridge, Sermons, I. xxxiv. 5. The act or fact of understanding; succe ful exercise of the knowing faculty; grasp of the significance or particulars of anything: as, to be quick of comprehension; the distinct compre hension of a term or of a subject. Like other English men of his time, he [Landor] had no adequate comprehension of men and things on this side of Stedman, Vict. Poets, p. 64. the Atlantic. 6. In rhet., a trope or figure by which the name of a whole is put for a part, or that of a part for a whole, or a definite number for an indefinite. Johnson.-7. In logic, the sum of all those attributes which make up the content of a given conception: thus, rational, sensible, moral, etc., form the comprehension of the conception man: opposed to extension, extent. Body, in its comprehension, takes in solidity, figure, quantity, mobility. Watts , Logic. The Internal Quantity of a notion, its Intension or Comprehension , is made up of those different attributes of which the concept is the conceived sum; that is, the various characters connected by the concept itself into a single whole in thought. Sir W. Hamilton , Logic, viii. =Syn. 4. See list under apprehension. comprehensive (kom-prē-hen's iv), a. [= F. compréhens if = Sp. comprensivo, comprehensivo = Pg. comprehensivo = It. comprensivo, I was for using comprehensive Names; and therefore these three Names of Atlantick, Indian, and South Seas or Oceans serve me for the whole Ambit of the Torrid Zone, and what else I have occasion to speak of. Dampier, Voyages, II., Pref. Is. Taylor, A most comprehensive prayer. More specifically - 2. Having the quality of comprehending or including a great number of particulars or a wide extent, as of space or time; of large scope; capacious. To begin, then, with Shakspeare. He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. Dryden, E . on Dram. Poesy,