znanie

Znanie is a noun found in several Slavic languages that denotes knowledge, awareness, or recognition. It traces to the Proto-Slavic verb *znati, “to know,” and shares its root with related words expressing knowing, acquaintance, or discernment. In Old Church Slavonic, znanie carried broad senses of knowledge and understanding, including spiritual or divine knowledge in religious texts.

In contemporary Slavic languages the form and usage vary by region. Forms such as znanje are common in many South and West Slavic languages, where they standardly mean knowledge or understanding. The form znanie appears in older or more formal contexts in certain languages. In religious, philosophical, and literary works, znanie is often used to denote knowledge in its cognitive or epistemic sense, sometimes with a emphasis on truth or illumination.

Philosophically, znanie relates to the broader concept of knowledge studied in epistemology. It is the linguistic cognate of terms across the Slavic family that refer to knowing or being acquainted with something, and it is used in translations of discussions about justified true belief, evidence, and justification. The term thus serves both as a cultural-linguistic marker of knowledge and as a bridge to cross-linguistic discussions of epistemology.

See also: gnosis, epistemology, knowledge, linguistics.