How to Use cognizance in a Sentence

cognizance

noun
  • They seemed to have no cognizance of the crime.
  • The scene is undeniably tender, but something in the couple’s eyes, cast down in cognizance, belies the presence of McGinley’s lens.
    Adam Davidson, The New Yorker, 3 Mar. 2017
  • The rejoinder to all this is that the furtive and ambiguous nature of the interaction with the Ukrainians may well point to a cognizance of its impropriety.
    Rich Lowry, National Review, 1 Nov. 2019
  • Still, an inchoate anxiety lurked behind the mania, a fleeting cognizance that for all their demands of more, nothing could ever match this.
    Elaina Plott, New York Times, 27 Oct. 2020
  • And seemingly no cognizance that on that very day, fires were consuming vast swaths of California and Oregon.
    Star Tribune, 18 Sep. 2020
  • Though there wasn't exactly an apology in Moreno's statement, the tweets do include her cognizance of the Afro-Latinx community's valid feelings on the matter at hand.
    Ineye Komonibo, refinery29.com, 17 June 2021
  • Here in Chicago, the mayor had to put fencing up at Montrose Beach after a crowd of overzealous disease vectors held a weekend party that didn’t appear to include masks, social distancing or cognizance of a pandemic.
    Rex Huppke, chicagotribune.com, 10 Aug. 2020
  • But Democrats, who control both chambers of the legislature, dismissed the idea, saying that the already existing committees of cognizance should look into the various aspects of school construction.
    Christopher Keating, courant.com, 24 Feb. 2022
  • The cognizance, which many say is nothing new but is being talked about more frequently because of the national discussion on police shootings, has bred movements like Black Lives Matter and hashtag trends like #shoppingwhileblack.
    Christine Hauser, New York Times, 28 Sep. 2016
  • But since those cruelly oblivious documents took no cognizance of the African people living here, the region remains in a constant cycle of suffering, rebellion and suppression.
    Ron Charles, Washington Post, 23 Aug. 2022
  • Taking cognizance of the shift change, companies must continue to innovate, invest in R&D, and continue to develop new technologies to thrive in today’s challenging landscape.
    Rebecca Maitland, Houston Chronicle, 29 Apr. 2018
  • Caesar tries to force a Roman republic into a global hegemony without full cognizance of the inevitable blowback from centuries of republican government, and so predictably is assassinated by a dying generation of dreamy senators.
    Victor Davis Hanson, New York Times, 20 Apr. 2018
  • And equity is, essentially, the cognizance of every individual’s uniqueness and needs by promoting justice and impartiality within the practices, processes and systematic distribution of resources.
    Madhukar Govindaraju, Forbes, 1 June 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cognizance.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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