reckon

Etymology 1

From Middle English rekenen, from Old English recenian (“to pay; arrange, dispose, reckon”) and ġerecenian (“to explain, recount, relate”); both from Proto-West Germanic *rekanōn (“to count, explain”), from Proto-West Germanic *rekan (“swift, ready, prompt”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- (“to make straight or right”). Cognate with Scots rekkin (“to enumerate, mention, narrate, rehearse, count, calculate, compute”), Saterland Frisian reekenje (“to calculate, figure, reckon”), West Frisian rekkenje (“to account, tally, calculate, figure”), Dutch rekenen (“to count, calculate, reckon”), German Low German reken (“to reckon”), German rechnen (“to count, reckon, calculate”), Swedish räkna (“to count, calculate, reckon”), Icelandic reikna (“to calculate”), Latin rectus (“straight, right”). See also reck, reach.

verb

1. To count; to enumerate; to number; also, to compute; to calculate.
   For all the king counted and pointed and reckoned, he could not find as much as a hair of them missing. 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 175
2. 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.
3. To charge, attribute, or adjudge to one, as having a certain quality or value.
4. (colloquial) To conclude, as by an enumeration and balancing of chances; hence, to think; to suppose; -- followed by an objective clause
   I reckon he won't try that again.
   The working life span of a passenger carriage, on average, is between 30 and 35 years, so a steady replacement takes place quite naturally. The life span of a station, however, cannot be so easily reckoned, for it depends largely on the rehabilitation and upkeep of the existing structures. 1962 October, Brian Haresnape, “Focus on B.R. passenger stations”, in Modern Railways, page 250
5. 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
   There are hardships that nobody reckons; There are valleys unpeopled and still; There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back—and I will. 1907, Robert W. Service, The Spell of the Yukon
6. (intransitive) To make an enumeration or computation; to engage in numbering or computing.
7. 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.

Etymology 2

noun

1. (dialectal) Alternative form of rackan (“chain”)