Understanding Meaning
/ʌndəˈstandɪŋ/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounThe act of one that understands or comprehends; the mental process of discernment of meaning.
nounReason or intelligence; ability to grasp the full meaning of knowledge; ability to infer.
Sentence Examples
We must sow the seeds of mutual understanding.
Mutual understanding is essential.
Students will gain a broad understanding of the workings of Parliament.
CEFR Practice Quiz
During the lecture, she demonstrated a deep ____ of the difficult topic.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Meeting the local people helped me gain a better ____ of their culture and their several unique traditions today.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English understandinge, understondinge, from Old English understanding (“intelligence, understanding”), from Proto-West Germanic *undarstandingu, from Proto-Germanic *understandingō, equivalent to understand + -ing (gerund ending). Cognate with Middle Dutch onderstaninge, Middle Low German understandinge, Middle High German understandunge.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"The Ways of Heav’n are dark and intricate,
Puzzled in Mazes, and perplext with Errors;
Our Underſtanding traces ’em in vain,
Loſt and bewilder’d in the fruitleſs Search; […]"
— 1712 (date written), [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a Tragedy. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], published 1713, →OCLC, Act I, scene i, page 2:
"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."
— 1999, Vivian Patraka, Spectacular Suffering: Theatre, Fascism, and the Holocaust:
"There is a multitude of theisms, many understandings of God, even within the same religious tradition."
— 2002, Ross Mackenzie, Marcus J. Borg, editors, God at 2000, page 48:
"The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure."
— 2013 August 3, “The machine of a new soul”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
"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."
— 2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
During the lecture, she demonstrated a deep ____ of the difficult topic.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Meeting the local people helped me gain a better ____ of their culture and their several unique traditions today.