Emily Dickinson Lexicon

CON'STRUE, v.t. [L. construo. See Construct.]

1. To arrange words in their natural order; to reduce from a transposed to a natural order, so as to discover the sense of a sentence: hence, to interpret; and when applied to a foreign language, to translate; to render into English; as, to construe Greek, Latin or French.
2. To interpret; to explain; to show or to understand the meaning. I pray that I may not be so understood or construed. – Hooker. Thus we are put to construe and paraphrase our own words. – Stillingfleet.