Comprehensive

How to spell comprehensive

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce comprehensive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does comprehensive mean?

1. adjectiveCovering everything or nearly everything; complete and wide in scope.
2. nounIn Britain, a state secondary school that admits pupils of all abilities.

Comprehensive in a sentence

• adjective

  The audit gave a comprehensive review of every department's spending.

• noun

  He taught maths at the local comprehensive for fifteen years.

• adjective

  She wrote a comprehensive guide that covered each step of the visa process.

• noun

  The village children all attend the same comprehensive on the edge of town.

Where does comprehensive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin comprehendere, which meant literally 'to grasp together' or 'to seize wholly', built from the prefix com- 'together' and prehendere 'to take hold of, to seize'. That same prehendere also gives us 'apprehend' and 'prehensile', words that all share the underlying image of grasping. By late Latin, comprehensivus described something that takes in or encompasses a great deal, and the metaphor shifted from physically seizing to mentally taking everything in. English borrowed the adjective through French in the early seventeenth century, first meaning 'able to understand' and soon settling into the modern sense of 'wide-ranging and all-inclusive'. The buried 'h' after the 'pre' and the unstressed middle vowel are the usual spelling traps, but remembering the grasping root prehend (as in apprehend) keeps the 'h' in place.

How the word is built

• com- (together)
• prehend (to grasp/seize)
• -ive (adjective suffix)