Third-person singular present tense of construe; to interpret, explain, or determine the meaning of something, especially language or actions.
From Latin construere (originally 'to build together,' later 'to arrange words grammatically,' then 'to interpret'). The meaning shift happened because understanding how words fit together leads to understanding their meaning.
The word 'construes' shows how medieval scholars thought about language—they 'construed' Latin sentences by examining how words were 'constructed' together, and from this we got the modern meaning of 'interpret.'
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