recognition
- 1The act of knowing a person or thing again by matching what you observe now with a memory of having observed it before.
Like the moment a half-forgotten tune clicks and you place exactly where you heard it.
A slow recognition dawned on him as he realized they had met years earlier.
The witness's recognition of the suspect was immediate and certain.
Similaridentification, recollection
Note
The root meaning, and the one that carries the fixed phrases. Recognition dawns on someone after a long look. A passer-by gives no sign of recognition, as in Charles W. Chesnutt's "A Stranger from South Carolina" (1900). A thing changed beyond all recognition, like a freight market, can no longer be matched to anyone's memory of it. Behind the word, by way of Middle French, stands Latin recognōscere.
- 2Honor, favorable notice, or attention given to a person for their work or achievements.
His research earned him recognition from scientists around the world.
The volunteers received public recognition at the town ceremony.
Similaracclaim, credit, appreciation, honor, praise
- 3Acceptance or acknowledgment of something as valid, true, or legitimate.
The theory slowly gained recognition among scholars as the evidence mounted.
Recognition of her foreign qualifications allowed her to practice medicine here.
Similaracceptance, acknowledgment, validation, endorsement
Oppositerejection
Note
Here acceptance can be built into an act or a document, so the noun sometimes takes an article: a law can be a recognition of civil rights. More often it stays uncountable and is followed by a that-clause, as in recognition that the material reflects its site. Unlike knowing something again, nothing needs to have been seen before. The thing is simply granted its standing.
- 4Official acceptance by one country's government of the status of a newly formed government in another country.
Diplomatic recognition of the new state came within weeks of its declaration of independence.
The council debated whether to extend recognition to the government that had seized power.
Similaracknowledgment, accreditation
- 5The property by which antibodies bind to certain specific antigens and not to others.
Antibody recognition of a specific antigen triggers the immune response.
The recognition between antibody and antigen depends on a precise molecular fit.
Similarbinding
Note
Immunology borrows the everyday word for selectivity. An antibody is said to recognize the antigens it binds and to ignore the rest, as if it knew its target the way a person knows a face. In technical writing the word sits close to specificity and usually appears with antibody and antigen. It names the precise fit between the two molecules, not any act of memory.
- 6In Scots law, the return of a feu to the superior: the lord from whom the land was held.
The superior pursued recognition of the feu after the vassal sold it without consent.
Upon the vassal's default, recognition restored the lands to the superior.
Note
In feudal Scots law the word meant land coming back to its lord, not anything being known or acknowledged. A vassal could incur recognition by selling or otherwise alienating the feu without the superior's consent. The term belongs to historical writing on Scots land tenure. Use it there with the legal sense made clear, since a modern reader will otherwise hear only the ordinary word.
Practice
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Origin
It comes from Middle English 'recognicion', taken from Middle French 'recognicion' and its Latin source 'recognitiōnem' (from 'recognitiō'), which derives from 'recognitus', the past participle of 'recognōscere'.