apprehensive
adjective
Henry Petroski
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How has the meaning of apprehensive changed over time?
When Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar “And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive,” he was not using the word apprehensive with the meaning which we so often encounter today (“viewing the future with anxiety or alarm”). The Bard was using the word’s older meaning of “capable of understanding or quick to do so” or “showing insight and understanding.” Apprehensive has shifted its meaning considerably in the seven hundred or so years it has been inhabiting our language. Its earliest meanings had to do with apprehension, to be sure, but it was apprehension meaning “the act of learning,” (a sense that is now obsolete) or “the act or faculty or grasping with the intellect.” The words apprehensive and apprehension both have roots in the Latin words prehendere meaning “to seize.”
Synonyms
Examples of apprehensive in a Sentence
Andrew Caffrey, Boston Sunday Globe, 2 Oct. 2005
… Sargent, a shrewder character, was apprehensive about how the portrait would be viewed by the conventional crowds for whom a day out at the Salon was a social fixture in the Paris calendar. He was right. The public saw nothing lovely in this pallid, long- nosed woman with her prominent chin and superior smile.
—Miranda Seymour, New York Times Book Review, 28 Sept. 2003
I arrived at my first Lamaze class the same way I showed up for my baby showers and ob-gyn appointments: a little excited, a little apprehensive, but mostly obediently, because it's what you're supposed to do when you're pregnant.
—Paula Spencer, Parenting, April 1997
I'm fully apprehensive of the options, I assure you.
Michael Saponara, Billboard, 27 Sep. 2024
David was initially apprehensive about endorsing Table Mountain Casino, but Derek, who is a spokesman for MGM Gaming and played in Las Vegas from 2020 to 2022, gave it a thumbs up because the casino has roots in the community and supports Fresno State and Valley Children’s Healthcare.
—Jeff Fedotin, Forbes, 1 Nov. 2024
Albeit apprehensive and fearful that the Black Girls Tennis Club would be whitewashed, the inaugural cohort of participants developed a close bond.
—Essence, 17 Oct. 2024
Echo Delta researchers found students most apprehensive about applying to college in high-profile red and blue states: California and New York for conservatives; and for liberals, Texas, Florida and much of the South.
—Daniel De Visé, USA TODAY, 15 Oct. 2024
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Dictionary Entries Near apprehensive
Cite this Entry
“Apprehensive.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apprehensive. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.
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apprehensive
adjective
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