understanding

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The ability by which one understands; intelligence.
• noun The quality or condition of one who understands; comprehension: synonym: reason.
• noun Individual or specified judgment or outlook; opinion.
• noun A usually implicit agreement between two or more people or groups.
• noun A disposition to appreciate or share the feelings and thoughts of others; sympathy.
• adjective Characterized by or having good sense or compassion.

from The Century Dictionary.

• Knowing; skilful; intelligent; possessed of or exhibiting good sense.
• noun The act of one who understands or comprehends; comprehension; apprehension and appreciation; discernment.
• noun The knowing power, in general; intelligence; wit.
• noun The representative faculty; the power of abstract thought; the logical power.
• noun Intelligence between two or more persons; agreement of minds; harmony; union of sentiment; also, something mutually understood or agreed upon: as, there was an understanding between them.

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

• adjective Knowing; intelligent; skillful.
• noun The act of one who understands a thing, in any sense of the verb; knowledge; discernment; comprehension; interpretation; explanation.
• noun An agreement of opinion or feeling; adjustment of differences; harmony; anything mutually understood or agreed upon.
• noun The power to understand; the intellectual faculty; the intelligence; the rational powers collectively conceived an designated; the higher capacities of the intellect; the power to distinguish truth from falsehood, and to adapt means to ends.
• noun Specifically, the discursive faculty; the faculty of knowing by the medium or use of general conceptions or relations. In this sense it is contrasted with, and distinguished from, the reason.

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

• noun uncountable Mental, sometimes emotional process of comprehension, assimilation of knowledge, which is subjective by its nature.
• noun countable Reason or intelligence, ability to grasp the full meaning of knowledge, ability to infer.
• noun countable Opinion, judgement or outlook.
• noun countable An informal contract, mutual agreement.
• noun countable A reconciliation of differences.
• noun uncountable Sympathy.
• noun All that people individually sense and feel of themselves.
• adjective Showing compassion.
• verb Present participle of understand.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun an inclination to support or be loyal to or to agree with an opinion
• noun the capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination
• adjective characterized by understanding based on comprehension and discernment and empathy
• noun the statement (oral or written) of an exchange of promises
• noun the cognitive condition of someone who understands