Glean vs Understand - What's the difference?
glean | understand |
To collect (grain, grapes, etc.) left behind after the main harvest or gathering.
* , Ruth 2:2,
* Shakespeare
To gather what is left in (a field or vineyard).
To gather information in small amounts, with implied difficulty, bit by bit.
* John Locke
* 8 December 2011 , BBC News, Iran shows film of captured US drone , available in http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16098562 :
To frugally accumulate resources from low-yield contexts.
A collection made by gleaning.
* Dryden
(lb) To be aware of the meaning of.
:
:
*(William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
*:I understand not what you mean by this.
*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=
, volume=189, issue=1, page=37, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= To believe, based on information.
:
* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)
, title=(The China Governess)
, chapter=Foreword To impute meaning, character etc. that is not explicitly stated.
:
:In this sense, the word is usually used in the past participle:
::
*(John Locke) (1632-1705)
*:The most learned interpreters understood the words of sin, and not of Abel.
*
*:Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language, he expressed the important words by an initial, a medial, or a final consonant, and made scratches for all the words between; his clerks, however, understood him very well.
To stand under; to support.
:(Shakespeare)
As verbs the difference between glean and understand
is that glean is to collect (grain, grapes, etc) left behind after the main harvest or gathering while understand is (lb) to be aware of the meaning of.As a noun glean
is a collection made by gleaning or glean can be (obsolete) cleaning; afterbirth.glean
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) , from (etyl).Verb
(en verb)- Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace.
- To glean the broken ears after the man / That the main harvest reaps.
- to glean a field
- content to glean what we can from experiments
- He said Iran was "well aware of what priceless technological information" could be gleaned from the aircraft.
- He gleaned a living from newspaper work for a few months, but in the summer went to a fishing village […] where […] he wrote his great historical drama, "Master Olof." (Translators Edith and Warner Oland on author .)
Synonyms
* (gather information) learnNoun
(en noun)- The gleans of yellow thyme distend his thighs.
Etymology 2
Anagrams
* * * *understand
English
Alternative forms
* understaund (obsolete)Verb
Sam Leith
Where the profound meets the profane, passage=Swearing doesn't just mean what we now understand by "dirty words". It is entwined, in social and linguistic history, with the other sort of swearing: vows and oaths.}}
citation, passage=‘I understand that the district was considered a sort of sanctuary,’ the Chief was saying. ‘An Alsatia like the ancient one behind the Strand, or the Saffron Hill before the First World War.