Definition of "understanding"

understanding

/ʌndəˈstandɪŋ/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural understandings
1. (gerund, uncountable) The act of one that understands or comprehends; comprehension; knowledge; discernment.
2. (countable) Reason or intelligence; ability to grasp the full meaning of knowledge; ability to infer.
3. (countable) Opinion, judgement, or outlook.
  Quotations
  The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure.
  2013 August 3, “The machine of a new soul”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847
4. (countable) An agreement of minds; harmony; something mutually understood or agreed upon.
  1. An informal contract; a mutual agreement.
  2. A reconciliation of differences.
5. (uncountable) Sympathy.
adjective
comparative more understanding, superlative most understanding
1. Showing compassion, tolerance, and forbearance.
2. (dated) Knowing; skilful.
verb
1. present participle and gerund of understand
  Quotations
  It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: […]; […]; or perhaps to muse on the irrelevance of the borders that separate nation states and keep people from understanding their shared environment.
  2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36