Understandseems like a pretty square English news . It come straight from Old English , it ’s write of two simpler Word of God , underandstand , and it ’s had its current significance , to dig , since our earliest records of it . Still , it ’s something of an etymological secret . What does “ standing under ” have to do with understanding ?
Most of our metaphors for understanding have to do with getting , grasping , or taking . When we empathise we “ get it , ” “ take in the drift ” or “ get a handle on it . ” The root word ofcomprehendis the Latinprehendere , grip . Perceivecomes fromcapere , “ take detention of . ” Many languages refer to these metaphors in their vocabulary of reason .
But the “ stand under ” metaphor does n’t seem to show up anywhere else . In the languages most closely related to English , thestandidea does come into play , but the word for understand have a dissimilar metaphor at work . Germanverstehen , Dutchverstaan , and Scandinavianforståare all related the Old English word , forstandan , which meant either “ bear in front of ” or “ stand aside / apart from . ” This spatial transcription has ties to another common metaphor that relates being able to see something with apprehension ( as inI see , orspeculate , from Latin for “ attend at ” ) and to another that relate understanding to the melodic theme of separate from ( discern , from Latin for “ separate ” ) .
Scholars have been argue about the motivations for Germanic verbs of apprehension for a long sentence now and plenty of explanations have been proposed . Oneholds that theunder - prefix also signify between or among , andto understandwas to fend between things in order to separate and distinguish among them . Anotherholds that Old Englishforstandangot mixed up with no - longer surviving equivalent word for understand likeundergetan(under get),underniman(under take ) , andunderthencan(under think ) , but in that causa it ’s still not clear-cut how those other words usedunderto relate to the idea of comprehension .
We may never know what the original coiners ofunderstandhad in intellect , but that has n’t halt us from nominate good use of it for over 1000 years . We get it anyway .
