recognise

To recognise someone is to know who they are because you have seen them before. The face in the supermarket you cannot quite place; the voice on the phone you get in half a second.

You recognise a tune, a smell, a handwriting, a street you walked down years ago. It moves easily into the mind: recognise that something is true means accept it — 'I recognise that this is hard for you'. Officially, one country recognises another's government, and a qualification is recognised abroad, meaning it counts as valid there. There is a public sense too: her work was finally recognised, meaning credit was given out loud. The noun is recognition, and the spelling recognize is American to recognise's British, one word in two coats. Do not swap it for realise: you recognise a face you have seen before, you realise a fact you had not thought of.