Comprise vs Comprehend - What's the difference?
comprise | comprehend |
To be made up of; to consist of (especially a comprehensive list of parts).
:
:
However, the passive voice of comprise must be employed carefully to make sense. Phrases such as "animals and cages are comprised by zoos" or "pitchers, catchers, and fielders are comprised by baseball teams" highlight the difficulty.
*{{quote-news, year=2011, date=December 10, author=David Ornstein, work=BBC Sport
, title= To include, contain or embrace.
:
To compose, to constitute. See usage note below.
:
:
*1657 , (Isaac Barrow), (translation), Prop. XXX
*:"Seeing then the angles comprised of equal right lines are equal, we have found the angle FDE equal to the angle ABC."
*
*:Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with (by way of local colour) on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.
(lb) To include, contain, or be made up of ("open-ended", doesn't limit to the items listed; cf. compose , which is "closed" and limits to the items listed)
* 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , IV.1:
* 1776 , (Edward Gibbon), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , Penguin 2009, p. 9:
To understand or grasp fully and thoroughly.
Comprehend is a related term of comprise.
As verbs the difference between comprise and comprehend
is that comprise is to be made up of; to consist of (especially a comprehensive list of parts) while comprehend is to include, comprise; to contain.comprise
English
Verb
(compris)However, the passive voice of comprise must be employed carefully to make sense. Phrases such as "animals and cages are comprised by zoos" or "pitchers, catchers, and fielders are comprised by baseball teams" highlight the difficulty.
Arsenal 1-0 Everton, passage=Arsenal were playing without a recognised full-back - their defence comprising four centre-halves - and the lack of width was hindering their progress.}}
Usage notes
* Traditionally, a team comprised its members, whereas the members composed'' the team. (The ''Associated Press Stylebook'' advises journalists to maintain this distinction.) The sense "compose, constitute" — as in "the members comprise the team" — is sometimes considered incorrect. According to '' also state that it is an increasingly frequent and accepted usage. * The use of "of" with the verb in the active (rather than passive) tense is always incorrect, hence *"the UK comprises of four countries" and *"four countries comprise of the UK" are incorrect.External links
* * English words affected by confusion English words affected by prescriptivism ----comprehend
English
Verb
(en verb)- And lothly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee, / That nought but gall and venim comprehended […].
- 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.