Emily Dickinson Lexicon

AP-PRE-HEN'SION, n.

1. The act of taking or arresting; as, the felon, after his apprehension, escaped.
2. The mere contemplation of things without affirming, denying, or passing any judgment; the operation of the mind in contemplating ideas, without comparing them with others, or referring them to external objects; simple intellection. – Watts. Glanville. Encyc.
3. An inadequate or imperfect idea, as when the word is applied to our knowledge of God. – Encyc.
4. Opinion; conception; sentiments. In this sense, the word often denotes a belief, founded on sufficient evidence to give preponderation to the mind, but insufficient to induce certainty; as, in our apprehension, the facts prove the issue. To be false, and to be thought false, is all one, in respect of men, who act not according to truth, but apprehension. – South.
5. The faculty by which new ideas are conceived; as, a man of dull apprehension.
6. Fear; suspicion; the prospect of future evil, accompanied with uneasiness of mind. Claudius was in no small apprehension for his own life. – Addison.