Word.ws English Dictionary

recognizing

UK/ˈɹɛk.əɡˌnaɪ.zɪŋ/

recognizing is the present participle and gerund of recognize.

Meaning of recognize

Verb

recognize (third-person singular simple present recognizes, present participle recognizing, simple past and past participle recognized)

  1. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To match (something or someone which one currently perceives) to a memory of some previous encounter with the same person or thing.
    • I recognized his face immediately, although his voice was different.
    Synonyms:
    place
  2. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To acknowledge the existence or legality of; to treat as valid or worthy of consideration.
    • The US and a number of EU countries are expected to recognize Kosovo on Monday.
  3. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive, or with clause) To acknowledge or consider (as being a certain thing or having a certain quality or property).
    • Slavery is widely recognized as immoral.
  4. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To realize or discover the nature of something; apprehend quality in.
    • In plants, the ability to recognize self from nonself plays an important role in fertilization, because self-fertilization will result in less diverse offspring than fertilization with pollen from another individual.2013 May-June, Katrina G. Claw, “Rapid Evolution in Eggs and Sperm”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3
  5. (British, English, Oxford, US, transitive) To show formal appreciation of, as with an award, commendation etc.
    • His services were recognized in a testimonial.
  6. (British, English, Oxford, US, obsolete) To review; to examine again.
    • We do moste humbly submytte it [this treatise] to[…]your maiestie, to be recognised, ouersene, and corrected.1534, Thomas Cranmer, The Institution of a Christian Man

See all 9 meanings of recognize

Questions about recognizing

What is recognizing the present participle and gerund of?
Recognizing is the present participle and gerund of recognize.
How do you pronounce recognizing?
Recognizing is pronounced /ˈɹɛk.əɡˌnaɪ.zɪŋ/ (UK).

Words near recognizing in the dictionary

  1. recognizees
  2. recognizer
  3. recognizers
  4. recognizes
  5. recognizin'
  6. recognizing
  7. recognizingly
  8. recognizition
  9. recognizitions
  10. recognizor
  11. recognizors

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: recognizing (page history and authors); recognize (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-recognizing.ogg.

Cite this entry: “recognizing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/recognizing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.