apperceive
Americanverb (used with object)
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to have conscious perception of; comprehend.
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to comprehend (a new idea) by assimilation with the sum of one's previous knowledge and experience.
verb
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to be aware of perceiving
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psychol to comprehend by assimilating (a perception) to ideas already in the mind
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of apperceive
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English word from Old French word aperceivre. See ap- 1, perceive
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Certain it is that the adolescent power to apperceive and appreciate never so far outstrips his power to produce or reproduce as about midway in the teens.
From Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene by Hall, G. Stanley
When they were come, they instantly ran over the things that were in my memory, but, owing to their promptness, I was unable to apperceive what they observed.
From Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There by Swedenborg, Emanuel
Then the queen departed into her chamber so that no man should apperceive her great sorrows.
From Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) by Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
People apperceive, think, and feel as these three teach them, and finally it becomes second nature to follow this line of least resistance, and to seek intellectual conformity.
From Criminal Psychology; a manual for judges, practitioners, and students by Gross, Hans Gustav Adolf
Evidently the ideal has been formed by the habit of perception; it is, in a rough way, that average form which we expect and most readily apperceive.
From The Sense of Beauty Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory by Santayana, George
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
