Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Fearful or uneasy anticipation of the future; dread. synonym: fear.
  • noun The act of seizing or capturing; arrest.
  • noun The ability to apprehend or understand; understanding.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of seizing or taking hold of; prehension: as, the hand is the organ of apprehension.
  • noun The act of arresting or seizing by legal process; arrest; seizure: as, the thief, after his apprehension, escaped.
  • noun A laying hold by the mind; mental grasp; the act or faculty of perceiving anything by the senses;
  • noun of learning or becoming familiar with anything;
  • noun of forming an image in the imagination (the common meaning in English for three centuries, and the technical meaning in the Kantian theory of cognition);
  • noun of catching the meaning of anything said or written;
  • noun of simple apprehension (which see, below);
  • noun of attention to something present to the imagination.
  • noun Anticipation of adversity; dread or fear of coming evil; distrust of the future.
  • noun Alarm, Apprehension, Fright, etc. (see alarm), disquiet, dread, anxiety, misgiving, solicitude, nervousness, fearfulness.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of seizing or taking hold of; seizure.
  • noun The act of seizing or taking by legal process; arrest.
  • noun The act of grasping with the intellect; the contemplation of things, without affirming, denying, or passing any judgment; intellection; perception.
  • noun Opinion; conception; sentiment; idea.
  • noun The faculty by which ideas are conceived; understanding.
  • noun Anticipation, mostly of things unfavorable; distrust or fear at the prospect of future evil.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun rare The physical act of seizing or taking hold of; seizure.
  • noun law The act of seizing or taking by legal process; arrest.
  • noun The act of grasping with the intellect; the contemplation of things, without affirming, denying, or passing any judgment; intellection; perception.
  • noun Opinion; conception; sentiment; idea.
  • noun The faculty by which ideas are conceived or by which perceptions are grasped; understanding.
  • noun Anticipation, mostly of things unfavorable; dread or fear at the prospect of some future ill.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun painful expectation
  • noun fearful expectation or anticipation
  • noun the cognitive condition of someone who understands
  • noun the act of apprehending (especially apprehending a criminal)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English apprehencioun, perception, from Old French apprehension, from Late Latin apprehēnsiō, apprehēnsiōn-, from Latin apprehēnsus, past participle of apprehendere, to seize; see apprehend.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin apprehensio, compare with French appréhension. See apprehend.

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Examples

  • The person in charge of dealing with such complaints called me back a few days later and said that that small plane was probably part of law enforcement monitoring an apprehension from the air in the event of a pursuit.

    What's the buzz? (Jack Bog's Blog) 2009

  • Vaccine apprehension is largely a luxury enjoyed by societies no longer ravaged by the dreadful diseases vaccines have helped prevent.

    David Katz, M.D.: What to Do About Flu? Get Vaccinated M.D. David Katz 2010

  • – If my apprehension is right and the bad effects of the law outweigh the good ...

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Major legal win for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus 2010

  • Here in the Persian Gulf, apprehension is off the charts.

    Matthew Yglesias » Predictions Are Hard, Especially About the Future 2010

  • The rest of the monkey orchestra merely shivered in apprehension of what next atrocity should be perpetrated.

    CHAPTER XXXI 2010

  • He lifted and dropped his feet with the lithe softness of a cat, and from time to time glanced to right and to left as if in apprehension of some flank attack.

    CHAPTER XV 2010

  • Once, when the ketch, swerved by some vagrant current, came close to the break of the shore-surf, the blacks on board drew toward one another in apprehension akin to that of startled sheep in a fold when a wild woods marauder howls outside.

    CHAPTER X 2010

  • But it does fill me with a certain apprehension and worry to be competing against people whom I find more respectable, more deserving of being nominated.

    oldcharliebrown's Journal oldcharliebrown 2004

  • Whitman's extravagant verse, unrestrained by rhyme and meter, subject to startling exclamations and even made-up words, was met with considerable apprehension from the literary community, Emerson and his fellows at The Atlantic included.

    America's Bard 2001

  • Whitman's extravagant verse, unrestrained by rhyme and meter, subject to startling exclamations and even made-up words, was met with considerable apprehension from the literary community, Emerson and his fellows at The Atlantic included.

    America's Bard 2001

Comments

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  • Why, do you think, that this word as a verb can mean to arrest, or to see clearly, yet as a noun, it means filled with dread. Is it that you are seized by paralysis, because you are so afraid, or that you are clearly aware of how forboding the environment is and thus become filled with trepidation? Or is it something else. The sources are very unforthcoming; they stay with the definition having started from 'to seize'. Anyone have any ideas?

    October 20, 2011