(~s, ~ing, understood)
Frequency: The word is one of the 700 most common words in English.
1.
If you ~ someone or ~ what they are saying, you know what they mean.
Rusty nodded as though she understood the old woman...
I don’t ~ what you are talking about...
He was speaking poor English, trying to make himself understood.
VERB: no cont, V n, V wh, make pron-refl V-ed
2.
If you ~ a language, you know what someone is saying when they are speaking that language.
I couldn’t read or ~ a word of Yiddish, so I asked him to translate.
VERB: no cont, V n
3.
To ~ someone means to know how they feel and why they behave in the way that they do.
It would be nice to have someone who really understood me, a friend...
Trish had not exactly understood his feelings...
She ~s why I get tired and grumpy.
VERB: no cont, V n, V n, V wh
4.
You say that you ~ something when you know why or how it happens.
They are too young to ~ what is going on...
In the effort to ~ AIDS, attention is moving from the virus to the immune system.
VERB: no cont, V wh, V n
5.
If you ~ that something is the case, you think it is true because you have heard or read that it is. You can say that something is understood to be the case to mean that people generally think it is true.
We ~ that she’s in the studio recording her second album...
As I ~ it, you came round the corner by the cricket field and there was the man in the road...
The management is understood to be very unwilling to agree to this request...
It is understood that the veteran reporter had a heart attack.
VERB: no cont, V that, V it , be V-ed to-inf, it be V-ed that/to-inf
6.
If someone is given to ~ that something is the case, it is communicated to them that it is the case, usually without them being told directly.
I am given to ~ that he was swearing throughout the game at our fans.
PHRASE: give inflects, usu PHR that
7.
You can use ~ in expressions like do you ~? or is that understood? after you have told someone what you want, to make sure that they have understood you and will obey you.
You do not hit my grandchildren, do you ~?...
I don’t need it, ~?...
I don’t want to hear another word about it. Is that understood, Emma?
CONVENTION