apprehend

verb13

1. •
   To seize or take (a person) by legal process; to arrest.

   • Officers apprehended the suspect two streets away from the bank.
2. •
   To take hold of (something) with understanding; to conceive (something) in the mind; to become cognizant of; to understand.

   • This suspicion of Earl Reimund, though at first but a buzze, soon got a sting in the Kings head, and he violently apprehended it. — 1639
3. •
   To understand.

   • Cosin you apprehend passing shrewdly. — 1598
4. •
   To be or become aware of (something); to perceive.
5. •
   To acknowledge the existence of (something); to recognize.

   • [E]ach man for his own sake / Accepts you as his guide, avails him of what worth / He apprehends in you to sublimate his earth / With fire: […] — 1872
6. •
   To anticipate (something, usually unpleasant); especially, to anticipate (something) with anxiety, dread, or fear; to dread, to fear.

   • O let my Lady apprehend no feare, / In all Cupids pageant there is presented no monster. — 1602
7. •
   To be apprehensive; to fear.

   • Death never happens but once, yet we feel it every moment of our lives. It is worse to apprehend than to suffer. — 1700
8. •
   To have a conception of (something); to consider, to regard.

   • Tim[on]. That's a lasciuious apprehension. / Ape[mantus]. So, thou apprehend'st it, / Take it for thy labour. — 1605
9. •
   To be of opinion, believe, or think; to suppose.

   • And since thou reliest more on thy own precaution than upon my honour; be it unto thee as thou apprehendest, fair one! — 1748
10. •
    (no longer used) To seize or take (something); to take hold of.
11. •
    (no longer used) To take possession of (something); to seize.

    • Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. — 1611
12. •
    (no longer used) To feel (something) emotionally.

    • [H]ow it worketh in the mindes and soules of them that haue no power to apprehend such felicitie, it is not for me to intimate, because it is preiudiciall to our monarchie. — 1592
13. •
    (no longer used) To learn (something).

    • Though Children, without Study, Pains, or Thought, / Are Languages, and vulgar Notions taught, / Improve their nat'ral Talents without Care, / And apprehend, before they are aware; […] — 1681