Interesting that the Romance languages use a form of comprehend to express the notion of understanding, e.g. comprenez in the French, compreender in the Portuguese and comprender the Spanish. Comprehend has been around as an English verb since the 14th Century, built upon the notion that the mind "seizes" or "takes hold" of something in much the same way that a hand grasps an object. (The Latin "prehendere" is from whence we get the English "prehensile".) Thus the Latin way is not about standing but about grasping ... which is yet another way of expressing understanding.