recognition

[rek-uhg-nish-uhn]

noun

1. an act of recognizing or the state of being recognized.

2. the identification of something as having been previously seen, heard, known, etc.

3. the perception of something as existing or true; realization.

4. the acknowledgment of something as valid or as entitled to consideration.

   the recognition of a claim.

5. the acknowledgment of achievement, service, merit, etc.

   Synonyms: acceptance, notice

6. the expression of this in the form of some token of appreciation.

   This promotion constitutes our recognition of her exceptional ability.

7. formal acknowledgment conveying approval or sanction.

8. acknowledgment of right to be heard or given attention.

   The chairman refused recognition to any delegate until order could be restored.

9. Psychology.,  the act or process of retrieving information previously encoded and stored in memory, when cued with the targeted information itself.

   The paper studies the effect of storytelling on English learners’ recognition of vocabulary words.

10. International Law.,  an official act by which one state acknowledges the existence of another state or government, or of belligerency or insurgency.

11. the automated conversion of information, as words or images, into a form that can be processed by a machine, especially a computer or computerized device.

12. Biochemistry.,  the responsiveness of one substance to another based on the reciprocal fit of a portion of their molecular shapes.

recognition

/ ˌrɛkəɡˈnɪʃən, rɪˈkɒɡnɪtɪv /

noun

1. the act of recognizing or fact of being recognized

2. acceptance or acknowledgment of a claim, duty, fact, truth, etc

3. a token of thanks or acknowledgment

4. formal acknowledgment of a government or of the independence of a country

5. an instance of a chairman granting a person the right to speak in a deliberative body, debate, etc

recognition

1. In diplomacy, the act by which one nation acknowledges that a foreign government is a legitimate government and exchanges diplomats with it. The withholding of recognition is a way for one government to show its disapproval of another.

Other Word Forms

• recognitional adjective
• recognitive adjective
• recognitory adjective
• prerecognition noun
• unrecognitory adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of recognition¹

First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English recognicion, either from Old French or directly from Latin recognitiōn- (stem of recognitiō ), equivalent to recognit(us) (past participle of recognōscere; recognize ) + -iōn- -ion

Word History and Origins

Origin of recognition¹

C15: from Latin recognitiō , from recognoscere to know again, from _re- + cognoscere to know, ascertain

Example Sentences

While trailing OpenAI in terms of users and name recognition, Anthropic had been considered for several months the top performer in generative AI for computer coding.

Read more on Barron's

Council leader Mike Ross describes being included in the Best of the World list as "powerful recognition of how far our city has come".

Read more on BBC

Could Kane become the fifth, and finally gain recognition for his astonishing scoring feats, or will European football's new generation of talent get in his way?

Read more on BBC

The future belongs to systems that combine raw computational power with judgment, pattern recognition and domain expertise.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

"Number one on the patients' wish list is reading, but number two, very close behind, is face recognition," he said.

Read more on Science Daily

Related Words

• acceptance 
• admission 
• appreciation 
• awareness 
• concession 
• perception 
• realization 
• respect 
• understanding