Definition of "comprehend"

comprehend

/kɒmpɹɪˈhɛnd/

verb
third-person singular simple present comprehends, present participle comprehending, simple past and past participle comprehended
1. (now rare) To include, comprise; to contain.
  Quotations
  And lothly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee, / That nought but gall and venim comprehended […].
  1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie
  In the second century of the Christian Æra, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.
  1776, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Penguin, published 2009, page 9
2. To understand or grasp fully and thoroughly.
  Quotations
  Our ſoules, whoſe faculties can comprehendThe wondrous Architecture of the world:And meaſure euery wandring planets courſe,Still climing after knowledge infinite, […]
  c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, Act II, scene vii