''apprehension'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''apprehension'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250816013616-00-⌔

apprehension - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

apprehension (countable and uncountable, plural apprehensions)

• The taking of something.
  • (rare) The physical act of seizing or taking hold of (something); seizing.
    • ✤ Synonyms: grab, seizure
    • ✤ Antonym: release
    • ✤ The wing would have been a severe obstruction to apprehension of an object on the ground.¹
  • (law) The act of seizing or taking by legal process; arrest.
    • ✤ Synonyms: capture, taking
    • ✤ Antonym: release
    • ✤ The warrant had been issued for his apprehension on the charge of rioting.²
    • ✤ When he told us that a large reward was offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock for the murderer’s apprehension, I did not in my first consternation understand why; […]³
    • ✤ After video emerged of an aggressive apprehension of a teenager in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, McLaughlin claimed it was old video and didn’t involve ICE. She called it “a video from a burglary arrest Chicago Police made over a year ago.”⁴
• The awareness of something
  • Perception; the act of understanding using one’s intellect without affirming, denying, or passing any judgment
    • ✤ We live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life.⁵
  • Opinion; conception; sentiment; idea.
    • ✤ Synonym: notion
    • ✤ We think we get a kind of vague apprehension of what London means from the top of a ‘bus better than anywhere else.⁶
  • The faculty by which ideas are conceived or by which perceptions are grasped; understanding.
    • ✤ Synonyms: awareness, consciousness, sense
    • ✤ Antonym: inapprehension
    • ✤ Strangers of limited information and dull apprehension were sometimes observed not to know what a Powler was.⁷
  • Anticipation, especially of unfavorable things such as dread or fear or the prospect of something unpleasant in the future.
    • ✤ Synonyms: alarm, trepidation, see also: Thesaurus:apprehension
    • ✤ Antonyms: calm, peace of mind
    • ✤ Every circumstance which evinced the savage nature of the beings at whose mercy I was, augmented the fearful apprehensions that consumed me.⁸

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin apprehensio, apprehensionis, compare with French appréhension. See apprehend.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA: /æp.ɹɪˈhɛn.ʃən/
• (US) IPA: /æp.ɹiˈhɛn.ʃən/
• Audio (UK): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

1. 2006, Phil Senter, “Comparison of Forelimb Function between Deinonychus and Babiraptor (Theropoda: Dromaeosauridea)”, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, vol. 26, no. 4 (Dec.), p. 905: ↩

2. 1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 37, in North and South: ↩

3. 1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC: ↩

4. 2026 February 17, Aaron Blake, “The many claims by Trump’s DHS that have fallen apart”, in CNN ‎${}^{[1]}$, archived from the original on 18 February 2026: ↩

5. 1815, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “On Life,”, in A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays, published 1840: ↩

6. 1901, Kate Douglas Wiggin, chapter 8, in Penelope’s English Experiences: ↩

7. 1854, Charles Dickens, chapter 7, in Hard Times: ↩

8. 1846, Herman Melville, chapter 32, in Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life: ↩

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