Meaning & use
apprehended
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“apprehended” is a form of “apprehend”. See that entry for the full set of meanings.
Meanings
verbtransitiveformallegal
Past tense and past participle of apprehend: caught and held by the police for a crime.
Grammar: Takes an object, and is often passive: the suspect was apprehended.
Patterns
- someone was apprehended by someone
- apprehended while doing something
Police apprehended the suspect two blocks from the bank.
The thief was apprehended while climbing over the fence.
Two men were apprehended near the border.
verbtransitiveformalliterary
Past tense and past participle of apprehend: understood or became aware of something.
Grammar: A literary, formal use that takes an object: apprehended the danger.
Patterns
- apprehended the meaning of something
She apprehended the danger a moment too late.
He had never fully apprehended the scale of the project.
The students slowly apprehended what the poem was saying.
Word forms
| base form | apprehend |
|---|---|
| third person singular | apprehends |
| -ing form | apprehending |
Common combinations
- apprehended by police
- He was apprehended by police at the airport.
- apprehended a suspect
- Officers apprehended a suspect near the scene.
- safely apprehended
- The escaped prisoner was safely apprehended.
- apprehended the truth
- Only later had she apprehended the truth.
- later apprehended
- The driver fled but was later apprehended.
Synonyms and how they differ
- arrested
- Arrested is the standard legal word, while apprehended sounds more formal and can mean catching a person before any formal arrest.
- captured
- Captured suggests catching someone who was hiding or running, and is also used for soldiers and animals.
- detained
- Detained means held for questioning, perhaps without any charge, whereas apprehended implies the person is suspected of a crime.
- grasped
- Grasped is the everyday word for understanding something, whereas apprehended in that sense is formal and rare.
Opposites
Word family
- apprehend verb
- to arrest, or to understand
- apprehension noun
- anxiety about the future, or the act of arrest
- apprehensive adjective
- worried that something bad will happen
- apprehensively adverb
- in a worried way
Commonly confused: apprehended or comprehended?
apprehended vs comprehended
Comprehended means fully understood, with no sense of arrest. Apprehended covers arrest in most uses today.
Practice
The suspect fled the scene but was ___ by officers an hour later.
Choose one answer.
Apprehended means caught by the police. Comprehended means understood, and approached would not imply an arrest.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “apprehended”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.