Other forms: understandings
Understanding is a grasp of what something means. A deep understanding, reach an understanding, understanding of the subject.
It also means an informal agreement — reach an understanding — which is weaker than a contract and often deliberately so. As an adjective it means sympathetic: an understanding boss. Note that the stand in it is puzzling, and the best guess is an old sense of standing among or close to something.
1noununderstandingA grasp of what something means.
“He has a good understanding of how computers work.”
2nounagreementAn informal agreement.
“We have an understanding: I cook, and he does the washing-up.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
understanding is a grasp, or an agreement.
Old English understandan is under plus stand, where under may mean among or between rather than beneath.
Proto-Germanic
*understandingō
Proto-West Germanic
*undarstandingu
Old English
understanding — intelligence, understanding
Middle English
understandinge
English, today
understanding
From Middle English understandinge, understondinge, from Old English understanding (“intelligence, understanding”), from Proto-West Germanic undarstandingu, from Proto-Germanic understandingō, equivalent to understand + -ing. Cognate with Middle Dutch onderstaninge, Middle Low German understandinge, Middle High German understandunge.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA