verb. (once literary: now American).—To think; to suppose; to consider—peculiar to the Middle and Southern States, and provincial [HALLIWELL] in England: cf. GUESS and CALCULATE.
1611. Bible, Isaiah xxxviii. 13. I RECKONED [margin, R.V. = thought] till morning that as a lion, so will he break all my bones. Ibid., Rom. viii. 18. For I RECKON that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy, &c.
d. 1745. SWIFT, Nobles and Commons, v. I RECKON it will appear to many as a very unreasonable paradox.
1776. FOOTE, The Bankrupt, iii. What, you are a courtier, I RECKON?
1825. SCOTT, St. Ronan’s Well, x. I RECKON you’ll be selling out the whole—it’s needless making two bites of a cherry.
1889. Century Dictionary [American], s.v. RECKON, v. II. 6. The use of RECKON in this sense [to hold a supposition or impression] though regularly developed and found in good literature … has by reason of its frequency in colloquial speech in some parts of the United States, especially in the South (where it occupies a place like that of ‘guess’ in New England), come to be regarded as provincial or vulgar.
1892. A. C. GUNTER, Miss Dividends, iii. RECKON your pap has had too much railroad and mine on his hands to be able to even eat for the last month.
TO RECKON UP, verb phr. (colloquial).—To gauge a person; TO MEASURE (q.v.); TO SIZE (q.v.). Hence, to slander; to back-bite.
1852. DICKENS, Bleak House, liv. 447. Mr. Tulkinghorn employed me [Bucket, the detective] to RECKON UP her Ladyship.
1877. W. H. THOMSON, Five Years’ Penal Servitude, i. 33. The officer ‘spotted’ him directly, and if he could not ‘RECKON HIM UP’ himself, would mark him for the attention of some one else.
See CHICKENS and HOST.
