recognition

Noun

recognition (usually uncountable, plural recognitions)

1. (usually) The act of recognizing or the condition of being recognized (matching a current observation with a memory of a prior observation of the same entity).
   • He looked at her for ten full minutes before recognition dawned.
   • Warwick observed, as they passed through the respectable quarter, that few people who met the girl greeted her, and that some others whom she passed at gates or doorways gave her no sign of recognition; from which he inferred that she was possibly a visitor in the town and not well acquainted.1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, “A Stranger from South Carolina”, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC, page 8
2. (usually) Acceptance as valid or true.
   • The law was a recognition of their civil rights.
   • With fresh material, taxonomic conclusions are leavened by recognition that the material examined reflects the site it occupied; a herbarium packet gives one only a small fraction of the data desirable for sound conclusions. Herbarium material does not, indeed, allow one to extrapolate safely: what...1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page vii
3. (usually) Official acceptance of the status of a new government by that of another country.
4. (usually) Honour, favourable note, or attention.
   • The charity gained plenty of recognition for its efforts, but little money.
5. (usually) The propriety consisting for antibodies to bind to some specific antigens and not to others.
6. (historical, usually, Scots law) A return of the feu to the superior.