Your daily usage tip hot off the press.

 
 
 
 

Smarter words.

 
 

recognizance; reconnaissance; *reconnoissance.

 

recognizance; reconnaissance; *reconnoissance.  Recognizance = a bond or obligation, made in court, by which a person (called the recognizor) promises to perform some act or observe some condition (as to appear when called on, to pay a debt, or to keep the peace). E.g.: “The suspect was released on his own
recognizance.”

 

     In British English, the -g- in recognisance (as it is spelled in BrE) is silent. But in American English, the -g- is regularly sounded.


     Reconnaissance = a preliminary survey; a military or intelligence-gathering examination of a region. *Reconnoissance is an archaic French spelling of reconnaissance; it is also a needless variant of recognizance and of recognition. The verb corresponding to reconnaissance is reconnoiter.

 
 
 
 

Quotation of the Day: "Writing too largely in abstract terms is one of the worst and most wide-spread of literary faults. It sounds learned; it saves the writer from having to use his eyes and ears; and it makes slovenly thinking possible because it does not require definiteness.” 


—David Lambuth et al.,

The Golden Book on Writing 32 (1964).

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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