I was watching an episode of ‘Death in Paradise’ this week. One of the characters used ‘overstand’ as a play on words for ‘understand’, and I thought – why is it understand?
It seemed a bit counterintuitive to me – understand is a constructive word. It’s about interpreting information and perceiving meaning. But when the prefix ‘under’ is used, either in the sense of ‘beneath’ (as in undermine or underling), or in the sense of ‘not enough’ (like underdone or underwhelm), it tends to feel a bit negative. And you say you’re on top of things if they’re going as planned, but under the weather or under the cosh means things aren’t going so well…
The modern word understand, comes from Old English understandan. In Old English, standan meant ‘to stand’, but the prefix under- meant ‘between, inter-‘ or ‘among’. So understand could have literally meant ‘stand in the midst of’. Perhaps the sense of the word was ‘be close to’. I like that, it conjures up a visual representation.
It made me think a bit more about what understand means. It’s often used interchangeably with know, but knowing is not quite the same thing as understanding. You know discrete facts, but understanding is more dynamic, it involves forming relationships between facts by analysing them and placing them in context to form a big picture, giving them meaning.
So maybe the word understand represents being present in the middle of an idea, feeling a deeper connection with it. Or maybe it came from the sense of standing a thought in the midst of other thoughts in your mind, so they can be connected together.
BTW, there was also an Old English word oferstandan – ‘over-stand’ – but that seems to have meant ‘stand over’, as you would expect.
Sources:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/understand
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/understand
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/understand
That Word... where's it come from? 