Is it ever more appropriate to use “cognizant” over “aware”?

Question

In every sentence I have ever read that uses the word "cognizant," the word could easily be replaced by "aware." On top of that, "aware" sounds much less pretentious and to-the-point.

Are there situations or contexts which lend themselves more to "cognizant"?

Answer 1

I would consider it appropriate to situations where:

1. You are trying to sound pretentious.
2. A meaningful distinction exists between awareness and cognizance, i.e. things that are registering in your perception vs. things you are actively thinking about; for instance, I could see such a distinction arising in attention studies.

Answer 2

Personally, I eschew utilization of an over-augmented, trisyllabic linguistic unit like "cognizant" to express a paradigm when diminutive constructions are accessible.

I applaud you for NOT asking, "As 'cognizant' is longer and sounds more intellectual than 'aware' while it means pretty much the same thing, is there ever a time when I should use 'aware' when I could say 'cognizant' instead and sound so much smarter?"

On the serious side, I think the only time I've used "cognizant" was when I was doing contracts for the military and the word had a specialized technical meaning: a "cognizant activity" was the agency or department responsbile for some contract or task.

While a simple dictionary definition doesn't make this distinction, to my mind "cognizant" implies a true knowledge about or understanding of something, as opposed to simply having heard that it exists. So "Bob is aware of calculus" says to me that he knows it exists. "Bob is cognizant of calculus" tells me that he really knows something about it.

You might use "cognizant" for the same reasons that you would use any synonym: to avoid using the same word several times in the same sentence, to avoid unintended rhyme, to avoid using a word that sounds too similar to another word you have just used, etc. For example, if I started to write, "Are you aware that Wally is aware of the need to be wary of Warren's ward's housewares?", I think I would start looking for alternative words, and replacing one of the "aware"s with "cognizant" would be a possibility.

Answer 3

Aesthetic considerations sometimes favor cognizant over aware.

Poetry ensues:

I met a little ant
that was crawling up my pant
right by the stain on my knee.
I knew its locale,
and its direction as well,
but was said ant cognizant,
even a little, of me?

Aware would wreck the rhyme and meter here.

Answer 4

Merriam-Webster's definition of cognizant places emphasis on personal experience:

: knowledgeable of something especially through personal experience

I would say that use of cognizant is mostly prevalent in legal contexts.

Answer 5

In a medical context (especially if you're writing a script for a medical drama)

Doctor: Was the patient cognizant this morning?

Nurse: I was not aware of any cognizance this morning.

Although, upon checking the dictionary of medical terms used by medical professionals in the Electronic Medical Records software I program, we use "Aware" a few hundred times and "Cognizant" never.

Answer 6

I always associate the use of cognizant with insincerity. A politician or professional worrier (eg. social worker, senior police officer) would use use this word where the rest of world would be satisified with the more prosaic aware.

Answer 7

It would seem the words aware or know are almost universally more appropriate than the word cognizant other than (as Chaos points out) those cases where the speaker means to be pretentious (whether or not the speaker is cognizant – or aware? – of the effort or effect).