How to Use incomprehension in a Sentence

incomprehension

noun
  • She gave me a look of complete incomprehension.
  • He viewed the situation with incomprehension.
  • This was a minor bit of incomprehension on my part.
    — James Marcus, New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2025
  • Janet had never known the rules of baseball, and her incomprehension put her on edge.
    — Clare Sestanovich, The New Yorker, 25 July 2022
  • There was also a marked incomprehension on some readers’ parts of metaphor as a concept.
    — Hazlitt, 12 Apr. 2023
  • The names of the elements have long been a source of contention and incomprehension.
    — Neima Jahromi, The New Yorker, 27 Dec. 2019
  • The point of surveys and analyses like this to tear down the veils prejudice and incomprehension which plague the mainstream.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 25 Sep. 2012
  • The comradeship of men at arms becomes a refuge from the incomprehension of family.
    — The Economist, 1 Mar. 2018
  • Posts there with technical advice for the best home setup were jargon-filled to the point of incomprehension for a newbie.
    — Kashmir Hill, New York Times, 31 Dec. 2022
  • Most of her interactions are clouded by incomprehension at why things that are so clear to her should seem so peculiar to everyone else.
    — Jessica Kiang, Variety, 15 Sep. 2022
  • At root, the violence of May was born of mutual incomprehension.
    — New York Times, 1 Aug. 2021
  • Farrell, who also narrates in a soft voice, often wears a look of shy incomprehension, as if a beat behind in translating the world around him, a stranger in a strange land.
    — Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, 19 June 2026
  • The look on Mann’s face effectively shows the incomprehension this horror demands.
    — Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic, 24 Jan. 2024
  • Some of us were unimpressed, while others snarled at the unimpressed’s incomprehension of Roupenian’s achievement.
    — Josephine Livingstone, New Republic, 12 Dec. 2017
  • This resumption reawakens Shara’s incomprehension, shame, and—something that first emerged two short years ago—her animal instinct to fight.
    — Han Ong, The New Yorker, 18 July 2022
  • At first the central duo’s intergenerational incomprehension is played for laughs.
    — Jessica Kiang, Variety, 13 May 2026
  • Benedict Cumberbatch plays a man who exhibits rage, jealousy, and incomprehension when his brother marries.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 6 Jan. 2022
  • One of the major issues at work in the earlier controversies was one of methodological and cognitive incomprehension.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 17 Aug. 2010
  • Viewers unfamiliar with the source material are required to suspend not just their disbelief but also their incomprehension.
    — Tim Dowling, Newsweek, 27 Apr. 2017
  • Often, Andor and Klára stare at each other in mutual, forlorn incomprehension, each seeking and failing to find a mirror in the other’s gaze.
    — Guy Lodge, Variety, 28 Aug. 2025
  • The current queen is Hannah Neeleman, a homesteading mother of eight, who milks cows, bakes, dances, and takes part in beauty pageants, to the delight and incomprehension of her followers.
    — Sophie Elmhirst, The New Yorker, 29 Mar. 2024
  • Dabo Swinney’s incomprehension of capitalism and his lousy metaphors won’t derail Clemson football.
    — Blake Toppmeyer, USA TODAY, 12 Apr. 2022
  • No, the real problems arise when Ozark stages so many of its scenes in ways that downplay visual contrast, leaving almost everything shrouded in shadow, to the point of genuine incomprehension.
    — Todd Vanderwerff, Vox, 1 Sep. 2018
  • For someone like me, brought up Catholic, mortal sin has remained the secret par excellence, a pagan custom, delicious in its dark-ness and all the human incomprehension that surrounds it.
    — Literary Hub, 31 Mar. 2026
  • But philistine incomprehension never deterred Stein.
    — Judith Thurman, New Yorker, 29 Sep. 2025
  • The series does lean a little hard at first into gags about intergenerational mutual incomprehension and Liza almost blowing her cover by forgetting not to act her age.
    — Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, 15 Apr. 2021
  • America, however, was playing catch-up as initial incomprehension and ridicule soon led to enthusiastic acceptance if not adoration.
    — Steven Litt, cleveland, 6 Nov. 2022
  • President Carter looked with incomprehension and sorrow at the scene around Boston Road during his 1977 visit.
    — Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, 15 July 2024
  • But actually the switchup is Jarmusch’s master stroke, allowing richer themes of parental and intergenerational incomprehension to come in to focus.
    — Jessica Kiang, Variety, 31 Aug. 2025
  • What remains is Menzies’s Lucas, a man in the eye of a maelstrom, initially mired in impassive incomprehension until a particularly brutal act shocks him into fury.
    — Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Times, 25 Feb. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'incomprehension.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: