recognize
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈɹɛk.əɡ.naɪz/
ipa: /ˈɹɛk.ɪɡ.naɪz/
ipa: /ˈɹɛk.ən.aɪz/
ipa: /ˈɹekənɑɪz/
ipa: /ˈɹekəɡnɑɪz/
Forms: form: recognizes
form: recognizing
form: recognized
form: recognized
form: recognise
Etymology: Borrowed from Middle French reconoistre, from Old French reconoistre, from Latin recognoscere, first attested in the 16th century. Displaced native English acknow (“to recognize, perceive as”), compare German erkennen and Swedish erkänna. Latin had rare recognizare (“to try by jury”).
Senses: examples: text: I recognized his face immediately, although his voice was different.
text: He looked in vain into the stalls for the butcher who had sold fresh meat twice a week, on market days, and he felt a genuine thrill of pleasure when he recognized the red bandana turban of old Aunt Lyddy, the ancient negro woman who had sold him gingerbread and fried fish, and told him weird tales of witchcraft and conjuration, in the old days when, as an idle boy, he had loafed about the market-house.
ref: 1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC:
text: Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.
ref: 1973, John Berger, chapter 1, in Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books, →ISBN, →OCLC:
synonyms: place
glosses: To match (something or someone which one currently perceives) to a memory of some previous encounter with the same person or thing.
examples: text: The US and a number of EU countries are expected to recognize Kosovo on Monday.
glosses: To acknowledge the existence or legality of; to treat as valid or worthy of consideration.
examples: text: Slavery is widely recognized as immoral.
text: I recognize that my behaviour has been unacceptable.
qualifier: or with clause
glosses: To acknowledge or consider (as being a certain thing or having a certain quality or property).
examples: text: In plants, the ability to recognize self from nonself plays an important role in fertilization, because self-fertilization will result in less diverse offspring than fertilization with pollen from another individual.
ref: 2013 May-June, Katrina G. Claw, “Rapid Evolution in Eggs and Sperm”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3:
glosses: To realize or discover the nature of something; apprehend quality in.
examples: text: His services were recognized in a testimonial.
text: The soldier was recognized in dispatches.
glosses: To show formal appreciation of, as with an award, commendation etc.
examples: text: We do moste humbly submytte it [this treatise] to[…]your maiestie, to be recognised, ouersene, and corrected.
ref: 1534, Thomas Cranmer, The Institution of a Christian Man:
glosses: To review; to examine again.
examples: text: before the siege was layd to the Towne, of minde to recognize, he fell unawares amongst an Ambushcade
ref: 1637, Robert Monro, Monro, His Expedition With the Worthy Scots Regiment Called Mac-Keys:
glosses: To reconnoiter.
topics: immunology
medicine
sciences
glosses: To have the property to bind to specific antigens.
Derived terms: recognizability
recognizable
recognizably
recognizance
recognizant
recognization
recognizee
recognizer
recognizor
Related terms: acknowledge
recognition
reconnaissance