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reckon

verb · noun

Simple meaning

To count; to enumerate.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

rehkuhn

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈɹɛkən

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

verb

  1. To count as in a number, rank, or series; to estimate by rank or quality; to place by estimation; to account; to esteem; to repute.

  2. To count; to enumerate; to number; also, to compute; to calculate.

  3. colloquial

    To conclude, as by an enumeration and balancing of chances; hence, to think; to suppose; -- followed by an objective clause

  4. To reckon with something or somebody or not, i.e. to reckon without something or somebody: to take into account, deal with, consider or not, i.e. to misjudge, ignore, not take into account, not deal with, not consider or fail to consider; e.g. reckon without one's host

    “You have to reckon with our opponents.”

  5. To come to an accounting; to draw up or settle accounts; to examine and strike the balance of debt and credit; to adjust relations of desert or penalty.

  6. To charge, attribute, or adjudge to one, as having a certain quality or value.

noun

  1. informal

    An impression or opinion.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C1 · Advanced
Frequency
Uncommon
Typical Use
Varies by meaning

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: To count as in a number, rank, or series; to estimate by rank or quality; to place by estimation; to account; to esteem; to repute.

Used this way, reckon is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

now reckon

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • reckoningnounInflected form

    Problem solving that involves numbers or quantities.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • ready reckonernounCompound term

    A handbook of tables used to facilitate computation.

  • day of reckoningnounCompound term

    Day at the end of time following Armageddon when God will decree the fates of all individual humans according to the good and evil of their earthly lives.

  • dead reckoningnounCompound term

    An estimate based on little or no information.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

verb

Sense: to count as in a number or rank

countsupposeconsiderregard

noun

Sense: impression or opinion

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.