Construction vs. Construe

The process of constructing.

Example: ‘Construction is underway on the new bridge.’;

Anything that has been constructed.

Example: ‘The engineer marvelled at his construction.’;

The trade of building structures.

Example: ‘He had worked in construction all his life.’;

A building, model or some other structure.

Example: ‘The office was a construction of steel and glass.’;

(arts) A (usually non-representational) structure, such as a collage etc.

Example: ‘"Construction in string and clockwork" took first prize.’;

The manner in which something is built.

Example: ‘A thing of simple construction.’;

(grammar) A group of words arranged to form a meaningful phrase.

The act or result of construing the meaning of something.

Example: ‘American conservatives tend to favor strict construction of the Constitution.’;

The meaning or interpretation of a text, action etc.; the way something is viewed by an observer or onlooker.

(geometry) A geometric figure of arcs and line segments that is drawable with a straightedge and compass.

The process or art of constructing; the act of building; erection; the act of devising and forming; fabrication; composition.

The form or manner of building or putting together the parts of anything; structure; arrangement.

Example: ‘An astrolabe of peculiar construction.’;

The arrangement and connection of words in a sentence; syntactical arrangement.

Example: ‘Some particles . . . in certain constructions have the sense of a whole sentence contained in them.’;

The method of construing, interpreting, or explaining a declaration or fact; an attributed sense or meaning; understanding; explanation; interpretation; sense.

Example: ‘Any person . . . might, by the sort of construction that would be put on this act, become liable to the penalties of treason.’; ‘Strictly, the term [construction] signifies determining the meaning and proper effect of language by a consideration of the subject matter and attendant circumstances in connection with the words employed.’; ‘Interpretation properly precedes construction, but it does not go beyond the written text.’;

the act of constructing or building something;

Example: ‘during the construction we had to take a detour’; ‘his hobby was the building of boats’;

the commercial activity involved in constructing buildings;

Example: ‘their main business is home construction’; ‘workers in the building trades’;

a thing constructed; a complex construction or entity;

Example: ‘the structure consisted of a series of arches’; ‘she wore her hair in an amazing construction of whirls and ribbons’;

a group of words that form a constituent of a sentence and are considered as a single unit;

Example: ‘I concluded from his awkward constructions that he was a foreigner’;

the creation of a construct; the process of combining ideas into a congruous object of thought

an interpretation of a text or action;

Example: ‘they put an unsympathetic construction on his conduct’;

drawing a figure satisfying certain conditions as part of solving a problem or proving a theorem;

Example: ‘the assignment was to make a construction that could be used in proving the Pythagorean theorem’;

Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations, and comes from Latin constructio (from com- and struere ) and Old French construction. To construct is the verb: the act of building, and the noun is construction: how something is built, the nature of its structure.

Example: ‘together’; ‘to pile up’;

A translation.

An interpretation.

(transitive) To interpret or explain the meaning of something.

Example: ‘The world must construe according to its wits; this court must construe according to the law.’; ‘Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons, 1954’;

To analyze the grammatical structure of a clause or sentence; to parse.

To admit of grammatical analysis.

(transitive) To translate.

To infer.

To apply the rules of syntax to (a sentence or clause) so as to exhibit the structure, arrangement, or connection of, or to discover the sense; to explain the construction of; to interpret; to translate.

To put a construction upon; to explain the sense or intention of; to interpret; to understand.

Example: ‘Thus we are put to construe and paraphrase our own words to free ourselves either from the ignorance or malice of our enemies.’; ‘And to be dull was construed to be good.’;

make sense of; assign a meaning to;

Example: ‘What message do you see in this letter?’; ‘How do you interpret his behavior?’;