Recognised

How to spell recognised

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce recognised

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does recognised mean?

1. verbPast tense of recognise: identified someone or something as already known, or formally acknowledged it.

Recognised in a sentence

• She recognised his voice the moment he answered the phone.

• The committee recognised her years of service with a formal award.

Where does recognised come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the British and Canadian past-tense form of recognise, which traces back to the Latin recognoscere, meaning 'to know again' or 'to recall to mind'. That verb was built from re-, meaning 'again', and cognoscere, 'to get to know' or 'to learn', itself a compound of the prefix co- and gnoscere, 'to know', the same ancient root that gives us 'know' and 'notice'. The word travelled into English in the fifteenth century through Old French reconoistre, at first carrying legal and formal senses of acknowledging or confirming something officially. Over time it broadened to the everyday meaning of identifying a person or thing as already familiar. The spelling trap sits in the middle: the silent g before the n, inherited straight from cognoscere, is easy to drop, and the -ise ending follows the older British convention rather than the American -ize.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• cogn- (know, from Latin cognoscere)
• -ise (verb-forming suffix)
• -d (past tense)

British and American spelling

Recognised is the British spelling. American English spells it recognized.