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comprehensive

adjectivenounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˌkɒm.pɹɪˈhɛn.sɪv//
  • United States//ˌkɑm.pɹəˈhɛn.sɪv//

Broadly or completely covering; including a large proportion of something.

adjective

  1. 1

    Broadly or completely covering; including a large proportion of something.

    When there are diametrically opposing views on a big issue that concerns millions of people, doing comprehensive research just makes sense.

    Nevertheless, the comprehensive comparative analysis of pumpkin viromes across various geographic regions by NGS remains deficient.

    So what is it that makes SBB (Swiss national railways) tick? In my humble opinion, two things. Firstly, a comprehensive and set-in-stone integrated timetable (incorporating trains, ferries, cable cars and buses, including the world-famous yellow 'post-autos'), compiled four years in advance and which gets tested twice before it becomes operational.

Etymology

Borrowed from late Middle French compréhensif, from Late Latin comprehēnsīvus, from Latin comprehendō.

noun

  1. 1

    A comprehensive school.

    Imagine a country where children do nothing but play until they start compulsory schooling at age seven. Then, without exception, they attend comprehensives until the age of 16. Charging school fees is illegal, and so is sorting pupils into ability groups by streaming or setting.

Forms

plural
comprehensives
comparative
more comprehensive
superlative
most comprehensive
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).