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understanding |
5 definitions found From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: Understanding \Un`der*stand"ing\, a. Knowing; intelligent; skillful; as he is an understanding man. From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: Understanding \Un`der*stand"ing\, n. 1. The act of one who understands a thing in any sense of the verb knowledge; discernment; comprehension; interpretation; explanation. 2. An agreement of opinion or feeling; adjustment of differences; harmony; anything mutually understood or agreed upon as to come to an understanding with another. He hoped the loyalty of his subjects would concur with him in the preserving of a good understanding between him and his people. --Clarendon. 3. The power to understand; the intellectual faculty; the intelligence; the rational powers collectively conceived an designated; the higher capacities of the intellect; the power to distinguish truth from falsehood, and to adapt means to ends There is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty them understanding. --Job xxxii 8. The power of perception is that which we call the understanding. Perception, which we make the act of the understanding, is of three sorts: 1. The perception of ideas in our mind; 2. The perception of the signification of signs; 3. The perception of the connection or repugnancy, agreement or disagreement, that there is between any of our ideas. All these are attributed to the understanding, or perceptive power, though it be the two latter only that use allows us to say we understand. --Locke. In its wider acceptation, understanding is the entire power of perceiving an conceiving, exclusive of the sensibility: the power of dealing with the impressions of sense and composing them into wholes, according to a law of unity; and in its most comprehensive meaning it includes even simple apprehension. --Coleridge. 4. Specifically, the discursive faculty; the faculty of knowing by the medium or use of general conceptions or relations. In this sense it is contrasted with and distinguished from the reason. I use the term understanding, not for the noetic faculty, intellect proper, or place of principles, but for the dianoetic or discursive faculty in its widest signification, for the faculty of relations or comparisons; and thus in the meaning in which ``verstand'' is now employed by the Germans. --Sir W. Hamilton. Syn: Sense intelligence; perception. See {Sense}. From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: Understand \Un`der*stand"\ ([u^]n`d[~e]r*st[a^]nd"), v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Understood}, and Archaic {Understanded}; p. pr & vb n. {Understanding}.] [OE. understanden, AS understandan literally, to stand under cf AS forstandan to understand, G. verstehen The development of sense is not clear. See {Under}, and {Stand}.] 1. 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. From WordNet r 1.6 [wn]: understanding adj : characterized by understanding based on comprehension and discernment and empathy; "an understanding friend" n 1: the cognitive condition of someone who understands; "he has virtually no understanding of social cause and effect" [syn: {apprehension}, {discernment}, {savvy}] 2: the statement (oral or written) of an exchange of promises; "they had an agreement that they would not interfere in each other's business"; "there was an understanding between management and the workers" [syn: {agreement}] 3: an inclination to support or be loyal to or to agree with an opinion; "his sympathies were always with the underdog"; "I knew I could count on his understanding" [syn: {sympathy}] 4: the capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination; "we are told that man is endowed with reason and capable of distinguishing good from evil" [syn: {reason}, {intellect}] From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]: UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse. His understanding was so keen That all things which he'd felt, heard, seen, He could interpret without fail If he was in or out of jail. He wrote at Inspiration's call Deep disquisitions on them all Then, pent at last in an asylum, Performed the service to compile 'em. So great a writer, all men swore, They never had not read before Jorrock Wormley
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