Fathom vs Realize - What's the difference?
fathom | realize |
(obsolete) Grasp, envelopment, control.
(nautical) A measure of length corresponding to the outstretched arms, standardised to six feet, now used mainly for measuring depths in seas or oceans.
(by extension) Mental reach or scope; penetration; the extent of capacity; depth of thought or contrivance.
* Shakespeare
(archaic) To encircle with outstretched arms, especially to take a measurement; to embrace.
To measure the depth of, take a sounding of.
(figuratively) To get to the bottom of; to manage to comprehend (a problem etc.).
To make real; to convert from the imaginary or fictitious into the actual; to bring into concrete existence; to accomplish.
* (rfdate) (w)
To become aware of a fact or situation.
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4
, passage=No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or
To cause to seem real; to impress upon the mind as actual; to feel vividly or strongly; to make one's own in apprehension or experience.
* 1887 , Sir (Arthur Conan Doyle), (A Study in Scarlet) , II:
* (rfdate), (Benjamin Jowett).
* (rfdate),
(business) To acquire as an actual possession; to obtain as the result of plans and efforts; to gain; to get
* (rfdate) (Macaulay)
(transitive, business, finance) To convert any kind of property into money, especially property representing investments, as shares, bonds, etc.
* (rfdate) (Washington Irving)
(transitive, business, obsolete) To convert into real property; to make real estate of.
In lang=en terms the difference between fathom and realize
is that fathom is to measure the depth of, take a sounding of while realize is to cause to seem real; to impress upon the mind as actual; to feel vividly or strongly; to make one's own in apprehension or experience.As verbs the difference between fathom and realize
is that fathom is (archaic) to encircle with outstretched arms, especially to take a measurement; to embrace while realize is to make real; to convert from the imaginary or fictitious into the actual; to bring into concrete existence; to accomplish.As a noun fathom
is (obsolete) grasp, envelopment, control.fathom
English
Noun
(en noun)- Another of his fathom they have none / To lead their business (Othello, I.i. 151-2).
Synonyms
*(measure of length corresponding to the outstretched arms) braceVerb
(en verb)- I can't for the life of me fathom what this means.
Synonyms
* fathom out, figure out, puzzle out, work outExternal links
* * *realize
English
Alternative forms
* realise (non-Oxford British spelling)Verb
(realiz)- We realize what Archimedes had only in hypothesis, weighting a single grain against the globe of earth.
- That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
- Many coincidences . . . soon begin to appear in them [Greek inscriptions] which realize ancient history to us.
- We can not realize it in thought, that the object . . . had really no being at any past moment.
- Knighthood was not beyond the reach of any man who could by diligent thrift realize a good estate.
- Wary men took the alarm, and began to realize , a word now first brought into use to express the conversion of ideal property into something real.