Recognized

How to spell recognized

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce recognized

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does recognized mean?

1. verbIdentified someone or something already known, or formally acknowledged it.
2. adjectiveGenerally acknowledged or accepted as legitimate or established.

Recognized in a sentence

• verb

  She recognized his voice on the phone before he gave his name.

• adjective

  She is a widely recognized authority on employment law.

• verb

  The committee recognized her years of service with a formal award.

• adjective

  The clinic uses only treatments backed by recognized medical research.

Where does recognized come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past form of 'recognize', which traces back to the Latin verb recognoscere, meaning 'to know again' or 'to recall'. That verb was built from re-, meaning 'again', and cognoscere, 'to get to know', itself a compound of the prefix co-, 'together', and gnoscere, the old root meaning 'to know'. The same gnoscere lineage gives English a whole family of relatives, including 'cognition', 'notice', and even 'noble'. The word reached English in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by way of Old French reconoistre, and early uses carried legal and ceremonial senses such as formally acknowledging a claim. The -ize ending reflects the Greek-derived verb suffix that English attached to many such borrowings, and the buried 'g' in 'cogn' is the spelling trap, since it is barely sounded.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• cognize (to know, from Latin cognoscere)
• -ed (past tense / participle)

British and American spelling

Recognized is the American spelling. British English spells it recognised.