incomprehensible adj

1 incapable of being explained or accounted for; "inexplicable errors"; "left the house at three in the morning for inexplicable reasons" [syn: inexplicable] [ant: explicable]

2 difficult to understand; "the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible"- A. Einstein [syn: uncomprehensible] [ant: comprehensible]

English

Etymology

From incomprehensibilis.

Pronunciation

Adjective

1. impossible or very difficult to understand
   • Greg Bear, Heads, 1990

     He shook his head. 'It's not only undefined, it's incomprehensible. Even the QL is befuddled by it and can't give me straight answers.'

   • Mark Twain, Letters From The Earth, 1938

     But this inference, which is supported by the opening of Book I, renders incomprehensible the note "and I have finished writing this," which is included within the dream.

Antonyms

• comprehensible
• understandable

Translations

• Dutch: onbegrijpelijk
• German: unverständlich
• Portuguese: incompreensível
• Finnish: käsittämätön
• Russian: непостижимый

Comprehension has the following meanings:

• In general usage, and more specifically in reference to education and psychology, it has roughly the same meaning as understanding.
• Reading comprehension measures the understanding of a passage of text
• In logic, the comprehension of an object is the totality of intensions, that is, properties or qualities, that it possesses.
  • Related to this, in Anglicanism, comprehension (or comprehensiveness) refers to the theological inclusiveness and liturgical breadth thought to be integral to the definition of the tradition
  • In set theory, comprehension is another name for the axiom schema of specification (or more specifically, the axiom schema of unrestricted specification).
  • A related term in computer science, list comprehension, denotes an adaptation of mathematical set notation to represent infinite lists. Comprehensions are most closely associated with Haskell, but are available in other languages such as Python, Scheme and Common Lisp.

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