understanding

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   characterized by understanding based on comprehension and discernment and empathy

   an understanding friend

2. 2
   noun

   the cognitive condition of someone who understands

   They have virtually no understanding of social cause and effect.

3. 3
   noun

   The act of one that understands or comprehends; the mental process of discernment of meaning.

   There are certain things that defy human understanding.

4. 4
   noun

   Reason or intelligence; ability to grasp the full meaning of knowledge; ability to infer.

   She has a solid understanding of particle physics.

5. 5
   noun

   Opinion, judgement, or outlook.

   It is the goneness of the Holocaust that produces the simultaneous profusion of discourses and understandings; the goneness is what opens up, what spurs, what unleashes the perpetual desire to do, to make, to rethink the Holocaust.

6. 6
   noun

   An agreement of minds; harmony; something mutually understood or agreed upon.

   I thought we had an understanding - you do the dishes, and I throw the trash.

7. 7
   noun

   Sympathy.

   He showed much understanding for my problems when he heard about my past.

8. 8
   verb

   present participle and gerund of understand

   It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: […]; […]; or perhaps to muse on the irrelevance of the borders that separate nation states and keep people from understanding their shared environment.

Etymology

From Middle English understandyng, understondynge, understondinde, undirstondend, understandande, from Old English understandende, from Proto-West Germanic *undarstandandī, from Proto-Germanic *understandandz, present participle of Proto-Germanic *understandaną (“to stand between, intercede, understand”), equivalent to understand + -ing (present participle ending).