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Description vs Understanding - What's the difference?

description | understanding |

As nouns the difference between description and understanding

is that description is a sketch or account of anything in words; a portraiture or representation in language; an enumeration of the essential qualities of a thing or species while understanding is mental, sometimes emotional process of comprehension, assimilation of knowledge, which is subjective by its nature.

As an adjective understanding is

showing compassion.

As a verb understanding is

present participle of lang=en.

description

Noun

(en noun)
  • A sketch or account of anything in words; a portraiture or representation in language; an enumeration of the essential qualities of a thing or species.
  • The act of describing; a delineation by marks or signs.
  • A set of characteristics by which someone or something can be recognized.
  • (biology) A scientific documentation of a specimen intended to reveal a new species by technically explaining its characteristics and particularly how it differs from other species.
  • The type description of the fungus was written by a botanist.

    Synonyms

    * (characteristics) sort, kind, type, variety

    See also

    * synopsis * interpretation

    Anagrams

    * ----

    understanding

    Noun

  • (uncountable) Mental, sometimes emotional process of comprehension, assimilation of knowledge, which is subjective by its nature.
  • (countable) Reason or intelligence, ability to grasp the full meaning of knowledge, ability to infer.
  • (countable) Opinion, judgement or outlook.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= The machine of a new soul , passage=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.}}
  • (countable) An informal contract, mutual agreement.
  • (countable) A reconciliation of differences.
  • (uncountable) Sympathy.
  • All that people individually sense and feel of themselves.
  • See also

    * intellection

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Showing compassion.
  • Verb

    (head)
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=David Simpson
  • , volume=188, issue=26, page=36, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Fantasy of navigation , passage=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.}}