recognisance

1. 1.

   (law) a security entered into before a court with a condition to perform some act required by law; on failure to perform that act a sum is forfeited

   Synonymsrecognizance

   Broadersecurity

   Narrowerbail

   law

Other forms of recognisance

plural

recognisances·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about recognisance

What does recognisance mean?

recognisance means "(law) a security entered into before a court with a condition to perform some act required by law; on failure to perform that act a sum is forfeited".

How many syllables are in recognisance?

recognisance has 4 syllables: re-cog-ni-sance. The stress falls on "cog".

What is another word for recognisance?

Close synonyms include recognizance. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is recognisance a common word?

recognisance is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.