Other forms: reckoned, reckoning, reckons
To reckon is to calculate, or to hold an opinion. I reckon so, reckon the cost, reckon on finishing today.
The opinion sense is informal and very common in British and Australian speech. To reckon with somebody is to have to deal with them, and a force to be reckoned with is the standard phrase.
1verbreckonTo calculate, or to hold an opinion.
“I reckon we'll need three more chairs for the party.”
reckon is a judging.
Old English recenian meant to arrange or pay, from a Germanic root; the sense of counting came first.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₃reǵ-
Proto-West Germanic
*rekanōn — to count, explain
Old English
recenian — to pay; arrange, dispose, reckon
Middle English
rekenen
English, today
reckon
Built from
From Middle English rekenen, from Old English recenian (“to pay; arrange, dispose, reckon”) and ġerecenian (“to explain, recount, relate”); both from Proto-West Germanic rekanōn (“to count, explain”), from Proto-West Germanic rekan (“swift, ready, prompt”), from Proto-Indo-European h₃reǵ- (“to make straight or right”). Cognate with Scots rekkin (“to enumerate, mention, narrate, rehearse, count, calculate, compute”), stq reekenje (“to calculate, figure, reckon”), West Frisian rekkenje (“to account, tally, calculate, figure”), Dutch rekenen (“to count, calculate, reckon, charge”), German Low German reken (“to reckon”), German rechnen (“to count, reckon, calculate”), Danish regne (“to calculate”), Swedish räkna (“to count, calculate, reckon”), Norwegian Nynorsk rekna (“to calculate”), Icelandic reikna (“to calculate”), Latin rectus (“straight, right”). See also reck, reach.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA