Reconnaissance

How to spell reconnaissance

14 letters · 4 syllables

181 of the 265 people asked to spell reconnaissance in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

The most common mistake is reconnaisance. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

reconnaisance reconnaissance

What people typed instead

• reconnaisance41 people
• reconaissance29 people
• reconissance5 people
• reconnisance5 people
• reconassance4 people
• reconnaissence4 people

How to pronounce reconnaissance

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reconnaissance mean?

1. nounA preliminary survey or inspection of an area to gather information, especially about an enemy or about terrain.

Reconnaissance in a sentence

• The patrol carried out a careful reconnaissance of the valley before dawn.

• The surveyors made a quick reconnaissance of the site before drawing up plans.

Where does reconnaissance come from?

Language of origin: French

The word came into English in the early nineteenth century straight from French, where reconnaissance literally meant 'recognition' or 'the act of recognising'. It was built on the French verb reconnaître, 'to recognise', which itself descends from the Latin recognoscere, a compound of re- 'again' and cognoscere 'to know' or 'to get to know'. The military sense, surveying enemy ground to learn what is there, grew naturally out of that idea of going to find out and recognise the lay of the land. English already had the plainer relative 'recognise' from the same Latin root, but it borrowed reconnaissance whole, French spelling and all, which is exactly why the word keeps its tricky double n, the awkward -aiss- cluster, and the soft -ance ending. The closely related verb 'reconnoitre' arrived around the same time and shares the same parentage, so anyone who can spell one has a foothold on the other.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• connaiss- (from French connaître: to know, recognise)
• -ance (noun suffix)

People who misspell reconnaissance also struggle with

Of the Spelling Garden players who got reconnaissance wrong the first time, this is how many also got each of these wrong.

• guerrilla 100% of them got it wrong
• idiosyncrasy 83% of them got it wrong
• connoisseur 82% of them got it wrong
• supersede 82% of them got it wrong
• gubernatorial 73% of them got it wrong
• bourgeois 68% of them got it wrong