Comprehensive: Definition & Meaning for the SAT
⚡️ COMPREHENSIVE most nearly means: (A) compressed; (B) complicated; (C) thorough; (D) understandable. 👉 Answer + examples, pronunciation, and full SAT explanation inside.
TL;DR: Comprehensive means complete and including everything; thorough. Important! comprehensive does NOT mean 'understanding' or 'empathetic'.
ℹ️ Part of Speech of Comprehensive
comprehensive is an ADJECTIVE.
🗣️ Pronunciation of Comprehensive
comprehensive is pronounced /ˌkɑm.prɪ.ˈhen.sɪv/ or kom-prih-HEN-siv.
📚️ Definition of Comprehensive
Including or dealing with all or nearly all elements or aspects of something; complete and thorough in coverage or scope. Example: a comprehensive insurance policy that covers theft, accidents, and most natural disasters.
📰 Examples of Comprehensive
Here are some examples of the word comprehensive:
The doctor ordered a battery of comprehensive blood tests to check for any underlying health issues.
Before buying the house, we requested a comprehensive inspection that covered everything from the plumbing to the roof.
The comprehensive study guide included practice questions for every topic that might appear on the exam.
✅ Quiz answer
Answer to the question above:
C, thorough. Explanations: A doesn't work; compressed means squeezed or condensed, not complete. B is incorrect; complicated means complex or difficult, which has nothing to do with being complete. D doesn't fit; understandable means easy to comprehend, not thorough or complete.
That’s a great question. Yes, they are very similar.
I would say that the word exhausted means covering or including literally everything that you can find, like the verb exhaust itself.
For example, if your puppy ran away, you would do an exhaustive search to find him you would spend days, weeks, or months for absolutely every place that he could be from the cupboards inside your house to alleyways nearby.
Comprehensive is more like including everything that someone would normally need. For example, if you are a teacher and you want to give your students a reference, would probably give them a comprehensive one, which would include all of the important information within a certain scope.
One more comparison – a comprehensive dictionary of a language might be 500 pages long. But exhaustive research even on a single word could actually be just as long since you would literally be searching for every single piece of information that you could find, all over the world, for all of recorded history.
Can we say exhaustive?