Word.ws English Dictionary

reconnaître

reconnaître is the rare form of reconnoitre.

Meaning of reconnoitre

Verb

reconnoitre (third-person singular simple present reconnoitres, present participle reconnoitring, simple past and past participle reconnoitred)

  1. (intransitive, transitive) To perform a reconnaissance (of an area; an enemy position); to scout with the aim of gaining information.
    • Our scout will reconnoitre the path ahead of our troops.
  2. (obsolete) To recognise.
    • As to my person, it will not be so easy to reconnoitre it, for I question whether any of it will remain1765, Horace Walpole, The Correspondence of Horace Walpole, with George Montagu, Esq

See all 3 meanings of reconnoitre

Forms of reconnaître

third-person singular presentreconnaîtres
present participlereconnaîtring
past participlereconnaîtred
pastreconnaîtred

Origin of reconnaître

Borrowed from French reconnaître.

Questions about reconnaître

What is reconnaître the rare form of?
Reconnaître is the rare form of reconnoitre.

Words near reconnaître in the dictionary

  1. reconnaisance
  2. reconnaissance
  3. reconnaissance in force
  4. reconnaissances
  5. reconnaissances in force
  6. reconnaître
  7. reconnect
  8. reconnectable
  9. reconnected
  10. reconnecting
  11. reconnection

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reconnaître (page history and authors); reconnoitre (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.

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Cite this entry: “reconnaître.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/reconna%C3%AEtre. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.