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Informed vs Understand - What's the difference?

informed | understand |

As verbs the difference between informed and understand

is that informed is (inform) while understand is (lb) to be aware of the meaning of.

As an adjective informed

is instructed; having knowledge of a fact or area of education or informed can be (obsolete) unformed or ill-formed; deformed; shapeless.

informed

English

Etymology 1

Verb

(head)
  • (inform)
  • Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Instructed; having knowledge of a fact or area of education.
  • Based on knowledge; founded on due understanding of a situation.
  • * 2009 , (Diarmaid MacCulloch), A History of Christianity , Penguin 2010, p. 696:
  • Another informed and sobering estimate is that by 1800 indigenous populations in the western hemisphere were a tenth of what they had been three centuries before.
  • (obsolete) Created, given form.
  • * 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , III.vi:
  • after Nilus invndation, / Infinite shapes of creatures men do fynd, / Informed in the mud, on which the Sunne hath shynd.

    Etymology 2

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (obsolete) unformed or ill-formed; deformed; shapeless
  • (Spenser)

    understand

    English

    Alternative forms

    * understaund (obsolete)

    Verb

  • (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= Sam Leith
  • , volume=189, issue=1, page=37, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= 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.}}
  • To believe, based on information.
  • :
  • * {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)
  • , title=(The China Governess) , chapter=Foreword 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.
  • 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)
  • Usage notes

    * Common objects of this verb include text'', ''word(s)'', ''sentence(s)'', ''note(s) , etc. * Rarely, the obsolete past tense form understanded'' may be found, e.g. in the ''Book of Common Prayer'' and ''Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church .

    Synonyms

    * (to know the meaning) apprehend, comprehend, grasp, know, perceive, pick up what someone is putting down, realise, grok * (to believe) believe

    Antonyms

    * misunderstand

    Derived terms

    * I don’t understand * understandable * understanding * understood

    See also

    * explain * why