UNDERSTAND', verb transitive preterit tense and participle passive understood. [under and stand. The sense is to support or hold in the mind.]

1. To have just and adequate ideas of; to comprehend; to know; as, to understand a problem in Euclid; to understand a proposition or a declaration.

2. To have the same ideas as the person who speaks, or the ideas which a person intends to communicate. I understood the preacher; the court perfectly understand the advocate or his argument.

3. To receive or have the ideas expressed or intended to be conveyed in a writing or book; to know the meaning. It is important that we should understand the sacred oracles.

4. To know the meaning or signs, or of anything intended to convey ideas; as, to understand a nod, a wink, or a motion.

5. To suppose to mean.

The most learned interpreters understood the words of sin, and not of Abel.

6. To know by experience.

7. To know by instinct.

-Amorous intent, well understood.

8. To interpret, at least mentally.

9. To know another's meaning.

10. To hold in opinion with conviction.

11. To mean without expressing.

War then, war, open or understood must be resolv'd.

12. To know what is not expressed.

I bring them to receive from thee their names, and pay thee fealty with low subjection; understand the same of fish.

13. To learn; to be informed. I understand that congress have passed the bill.

UNDERSTAND', verb intransitive

1. To have the use of the intellectual faculties; to be an intelligent and conscious being.

All my soul be imparadis'd in you, in whom alone I understand and grow, and see.

2. To be informed by another; to learn.

I understood of the evil that Eliashib did. Nehemiah 13:1.