How do you use the word 'discern?' I am doing a collaborative presentation with a colleague who sent me the PowerPoint presentation. I was about to argue his use of the word 'discern' until I looked it up. He used it to mean 'comprehend,' whereas I use it to mean 'to detect differences.' When I looked it up, I found some of the first definitions to be: "To perceive with the eyes or intellect; detect. To recognize or comprehend mentally."

How do you use it? [I know, jheem, words have different meanings. I am just wondering if people use it to mean "comprehend."]

If one is discerning then one will have an above average level of comprehension by virtue of one's ability to detect slight variations, differences and shades of meaning.

However, I would like to make another point. When I run courses in public speaking I tell my delegates to try always to use short words, simple words and, if possible, old words (by which I mean those which have stood the test of time and are still used - not archaic words).

If you, as the speaker, have to check the meaning of a word then it's very likely that many in your audience will need to do so as well. And while they're checking - mentally or even physically by questioning their neighbour - they won't be listening to what you're saying.

Two passages:

“There can be no doubt that, in the immemorial annuls of military history, at no time can the beneficiaries of a military action have been so numerous when compared with the paucity of the forces engaged in the actual bellicosity”.


“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”

You don't need me to tell you which one works best!

Well it certainly can't be used as a mere synonym of 'comprehend'/'understand':

*I can't discern what you saying.
*I'm trying to discern this paragraph.

The common meaning of it, the one readily comprehensible by any audience, is to detect something slight:

to discern a difference, to discern a shadow in an x-ray, to discern a house on the horizon, to discern a note of uneasiness in someone's voice, to discern that someone is not telling the whole truth

I think it could use it with the sense of understanding, as long as it kept some of the above sense. So to discern the whole of a plan is to comprehend it all and also to take in the details. That is, to perceive distinctly, applied to a whole not to a detail.

The SOED doesn't support a sense 'comprehend'. The current senses it gives are:

4. trans. To distinguish (one thing or fact) by the intellect; to perceive distinctly; intr. to judge of. 5. trans. To distinguish by the sight (or other senses); to make out.

So the core of the sense is always of distinguishing or perceiving clearly, and normally the object of that is something slight, that is where the ability to distinguish it can't be taken for granted.

Then there's always:

The mortician said, "Since you cremated your mother you don't need a casket but maybe I could interest you in discern?"


(I hope I remember that one when we get to the D's.)