Word: comprehend
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...knock someone down with a fist, and the cachet of a prizefighter exceeds that of, say, a football or hockey player, or a soldier, or certainly a novelist. In a century of institutional mayhem on such a scale that not only motives but actual numbers are impossible to comprehend, the boxer is our Deerslayer, the last surviving synthesis of American violence and American aloneness. And whether the boxer deserves to be a hero, still there is no denying him his status in merely practical terms in a country where violence is "as American as apple...
...some Biharis say they do comprehend. With a population of 70 million, many of them landless and impoverished, in a region roughly the size of New England, Bihar is one of India's most volatile states. It is an area bedeviled by crime, caste and religious clashes, where bandits subject people to daily terror. Many believe that some kind of firm measures by the police are necessary...
Early on swimmers learn to cope with the disbelief of friends who cannot comprehend rising at 4:45 a.m. for workouts; friends who can't understand why a workouts; friends who can't understand why a workout might come before a vacation; and friends who continually ask, "Don't you ever get tired of swimming?" or "Are you going to the Olympics...
...case of Feodor Fedorenko [Oct. 27], the Ukrainian-born immigrant now accused of being a Nazi criminal: I cannot comprehend why the Justice Department is seeking the revocation of his citizenship when more than 78,000 Cubans have immigrated to America and we have become responsible for their welfare...
...been crafted in the minds of many people as somehow an institutional prop that we shouldn't throw out in an age of instability and rapid change. May be it is just one more thing that it is a little too much for people to be willing to comprehend and absorb in a relatively short period of time...