Other forms: recollects, recollected, recollecting
To recollect is to manage to remember something after trying. I recollect it well, cannot recollect, as I recollect.
The effort is what distinguishes it: remembering can be involuntary and recollecting is deliberate. It is formal, and it turns up constantly in evidence — I do not recollect is the careful witness's answer, because it claims less than a denial. Note recollection; and that to recollect yourself means to regain your composure, which is the same word gathering something back together.
1verbrecollectTo manage to remember something after trying.
“I can't recollect where I put my keys last night.”
2verbregainTo regain composure.
“She paused at the door to recollect herself before walking into the interview.”
recollect is a remembering.
Latin recolligere is re- plus colligere, to gather. Collect, collection and cull come from the same gathering, so to recollect is to gather again.
Proto-Indo-European
*leǵ-
Latin
recolligo — gather again, recover
Medieval Latin
recollectus — remembered, composed
English, today
recollect
Borrowed from Medieval Latin recollectus (“remembered, composed”), from Latin recolligo (“gather again, recover”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA