Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To catch; take unawares or by surprise; seize, as a person committing an unlawful act.
  • To apprehend; learn.

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

  • transitive verb To take unawares or by surprise; to seize, as a person commiting an unlawful act; to catch; to apprehend.
  • transitive verb To detect; to discover; to find out.

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

  • verb To take unawares or by surprise; to catch or seize (a criminal etc.) in the act.
  • verb To detect; to discover; to find out.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin deprehendere, deprehensum; de- + prehendere to lay hold of, seize. See prehensile.

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Examples

  • He is oftener in his study than at his book, and you cannot pleasure him better than to deprehend him: yet he hears you not till the third knock, and then comes out very angry as interrupted.

    Microcosmography or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters John Earle

  • At such extraordinary times, princes, by their coactive temporal power, ought to procure and cause a reformation of abuses, and the avoiding of misorders in the church, though with the discontent of the clergy, for which end and purpose they may not only enjoin and command the profession of that faith, and the practice of that religion which God's word appointeth, but also prescribe such an order and policy in the circumstances of divine worship as they in their judgment of Christian discretion, observing and following the rules of the word, shall judge and try to be convenient for the present time and case, and all this under the commination of such temporal losses, pains, or punishments as they shall deprehend to be reasonable.

    The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) George Gillespie 1630

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