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Difficult, mentally or judicially; not easily apprehended, decided, or resolved; as a hard problem. The hard causes they brought unto Moses. Ex. xviii. 26. In which are some things hard to be understood. 2 Peter iii. 16.

To perceive by the ear; to apprehend or take cognizance of by the ear; as, to hear sounds; to hear a voice; to hear one call. Lay thine ear close to the ground, and list if thou canst hear the tread of travelers. Shak. He had been heard to utter an ominous growl. Macaulay.

Hence: Any object apprehended, conceived, or thought of, by the mind; a notion, conception, or thought; the real object that is conceived or thought of. Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or as the immediate object of perception, thought, or undersanding, that I call idea. Locke.

To apprehend in thought so as to fix and hold in the mind; to memorize. [R.]

g ideas; the exercise of this capacity; the act of the mind by which objects of sense are apprehended and retained as objects of thought. The whole mass of residua which have been accumulated . . . all enter now into the process of ideation. J. D. Morell.

al proposition is true. -- Illative sense (Metaph.), the faculty of the mind by which it apprehends the conditions and determines upon the correctness of inferences.

Not perceptible; not to be apprehended or cognized by the souses; not discernible by the mind; not easily apprehended. Almost imperceptible to the touch. Dryden. Its operation is slow, and in some cases almost imperceptible. Burke. -- Im`per*cep"ti*ble*ness, n. -- Im`per*cep"ti*bly, adv. Their . . . subility and imper…

Failure to cognize, apprehended, or notice. This incognizance may be explained. Sir W. Hamilton.

Not cognizant; failing to apprehended or notice. Of the several operations themselves, as acts of volition, we are wholly incognizant. Sir W. Hamilton.

To apprehend and represent by means of art; to show by illustrative representation; as, an actor interprets the character of Hamlet; a musician interprets a sonata; an artist interprets a landscape.

That act of the mind by which two notions or ideas which are apprehended as distinct are compared for the purpose of ascertaining their agreement or disagreement. See 1. The comparison may be threefold: (1) Of individual objects forming a concept. (2) Of concepts giving what is technically called a judgment. (3) Of two…

To perceive or apprehend clearly and certainly; to understand; to have full information of; as, to know one's duty. O, that a man might know The end of this day's business ere it come! Shak. There is a certainty in the proposition, and we know it. Dryden. Know how sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong. Longfell…

y appeared in public, to clear the way, and cause due respect to be paid to them, also to apprehend and punish criminals. Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power. Milton.

To fail to apprehend; to misunderstand. [Obs.] Holland.

ceive wrongly; to interpret incorrectly; to receive a false notion of; to misjudge; to misapprehend. Those things which, for want of due consideration heretofore, they have misconceived. Hooker.

To take in a wrong sense; to misunderstand misapprehend, or misconceive; as, to mistake a remark; to mistake one's meaning. Locke. My father's purposes have been mistook. Shak.

Apprehending slight diffferences or delicate distinctions; distinguishing accurately or minutely; carefully discriminating; as, a nice taste or judgment. "Our author happy in a judge so nice." Pope. "Nice verbal criticism." Coleridge.

led the "idea" of hunger, cold, etc. I. Watts. Notion, again, signifies either the act of apprehending, signalizing, that is, the remarking or taking note of, the various notes, marks, or characters of an object which its qualities afford, or the result of that act. Sir W. Hamilton.

, or thing in itself, which is distinguished from the Ant: phenomenon through which it is apprehended by the senses, and by which it is interpreted and understood; -- so used in the philosophy of Kant and his followers.

That which is set, or which may be regarded as set, before the mind so as to be apprehended or known; that of which the mind by any of its activities takes cognizance, whether a thing external in space or a conception formed by the mind itself; as, an object of knowledge, wonder, fear, thought, study, etc. Object is a…