Comprehensive means covering everything that matters, with nothing important left out. A comprehensive report, a comprehensive review, comprehensive insurance that pays whoever was at fault.
It is about completeness of coverage, not about depth or quality, and that is the distinction learners most often miss: thorough describes how carefully something was done, comprehensive describes how much ground it covered. In Britain a comprehensive is also a school — a comprehensive school takes all local children regardless of ability, as against a grammar school that selects — and the noun is used on its own: she went to the local comprehensive. And beware comprehensible, which looks close and means able to be understood.
1adjectivecomprehensiveCovering everything, or nearly everything, that is relevant.
“The report gives a comprehensive account of what went wrong.”
synonyms: thorough, complete, exhaustive
2adjectiveinsuranceOf insurance, covering damage to your own property as well as to other people's.
“Comprehensive cover costs more but you will be glad of it.”
3nounbritainIn Britain, a state secondary school that admits children of all abilities.
“Both children went to the comprehensive down the road.”
comprehensive is a degree of coverage.
Also accepted in games: thorough, complete
Latin comprehendere meant to grasp or take hold of completely — com-, together, plus prehendere, to seize. English kept both halves of it: comprehend for grasping with the mind, comprehensive for something that has taken hold of the whole subject.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʰed-
Latin
comprehēnsīvus
Middle French
compréhensif
English, today
comprehensive
Borrowed from late Middle French compréhensif, from Latin comprehēnsīvus, from Latin comprehendō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Adjectives, Academic English