recognize [LME] To recognize someone is literally to know them again, from Latin recognoscere, from re- ‘again’ and cognoscere ‘to know’. Already in Latin this had developed logical extensions to the senses such as ‘examine, acknowledge, certify’. It was in these legal senses that the word first entered English, alongside recognition. Its use to mean ‘know by some distinctive feature’ dates only from the early 18th century. Reconnaissance [L18th] and reconnoitre [E18th] both come from the French form of the word, reconnoître. See quaint.