A word for reading something thoroughly until one understands it well? [duplicate]

Solution 1:

pore over "She spends a lot of time poring over the historical records of the church."

This idiom means that you're spending a lot of time reading, studying, digging deep into a text. It has more of the idea of looking for details than spending time to comprehend it as a whole, so it may or may not be what you're after.

Solution 2:

To pervade (or permeate) oneself with [a text] until it becomes assimilitated.

• It means to read (a text, etc.) and let it soak in you until it becomes perfectly understood.

E.g.

*Perdue pervaded himself with advertising, day and night. He devoured great volumes on the subject, and can still drop quotes by people like David Ogilvy and Rosser Reaves the way other people cite the Bible.

Another good phrase is to imbue oneself with, as in:

During his ten years at Oxford, Alison had deeply imbued himself with the Latin poetical literature, and had these poets at his fingers' ends when he traveled.

• It means to impregnate oneself with [something], to cause to absorb [it].

Or, more simply, you can do just as well saying to familiarize oneself with, as in:

Facilitators and students will adequately prepare themselves and familiarize with the book. This means reading the book and looking for points to bring up in the discussion.

"To impregnate [oneself with]" actually was the first expression that came to my mind, as long as it's a straightforward and quite naive translation of French "[s'] imprégner de". Though it shares the same sense in English, I'd best avoid it here, since it apparently is better known from native speakers of English in its literal sense "to make pregnant, get with child or young".

I impregnated myself with those five words for three years, until, through them, I became an initiate. I was only dimly aware of the work going on inside of me. The revelation which resolved my assimilation of Doru's words occurred in the autumn of 1979, in the countryside, and was occasioned by the fragrance of a small wine grape.

The usual outward means is to read good styles and impregnate oneself with them; it has of itself an influence on the writing.

• It means to pervade oneself with those styles, to assimilate them through careful reading and re-reading.

That being said, "to pervade oneself with [something]" or, said more simply, "to familiarize oneself with", still might be what works best for you, as long as "to impregnate oneself with" chiefly has the literal sense "to inseminate" in modern day English.

Solution 3:

Perhaps absorb

to learn and understand new facts, so that they become part of your knowledge: We had to absorb a lot of new information very quickly.

While it is not limited to obtaining information from reading, that is one significant avenue.