Recognize vs Comprehend - What's the difference?
recognize | comprehend |
To match something or someone which one currently perceives to a memory of some previous encounter with the same entity.
* 1900 , , (The House Behind the Cedars) , Chapter I,
To acknowledge the existence or legality of something; treat as valid or worthy of consideration.
To acknowledge or consider as something.
To realize or discover the nature of something; apprehend quality in; realize or admit that.
* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author=
, title= To give an award.
To show appreciation of.
(obsolete) To review; to examine again.
(obsolete) To reconnoiter.
To cognize again.
* 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , IV.1:
* 1776 , (Edward Gibbon), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , Penguin 2009, p. 9:
To understand or grasp fully and thoroughly.
As verbs the difference between recognize and comprehend
is that recognize is to match something or someone which one currently perceives to a memory of some previous encounter with the same entity or recognize can be to cognize again while comprehend is .recognize
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) reconoistre, from (etyl) recognoscere, first attested in the 16th century. Displaced native English , compare German erkennen.Alternative forms
* recognise (non-Oxford British spelling)Verb
(recogniz) (North American and Oxford British spelling)- He looked in vain into the stalls for the butcher who had sold fresh meat twice a week, on market days, and he felt a genuine thrill of pleasure when he recognized the red bandana turban of old Aunt Lyddy, the ancient negro woman who had sold him gingerbread and fried fish, and told him weird tales of witchcraft and conjuration, in the old days when, as an idle boy, he had loafed about the market-house.
Katrina G. Claw
Rapid Evolution in Eggs and Sperm, volume=101, issue=3, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=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.}}
- to recognize services by a testimonial
- (South)
Derived terms
* recognizability * recognizable * recognizably * recognizance * recognizant * recognization * recognizee * recognizer * recognizorEtymology 2
From re-'' + ''cognizeAlternative forms
* re-cognizeVerb
(recogniz) (North American and Oxford British spelling)comprehend
English
Verb
(en verb)- And lothly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee, / That nought but gall and venim comprehended […].
- In the second century of the Christian Æra, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.