Words may be false and full of art; Sighs are the natural language of the heart...

Jocasta, Tony Scherman, 1974.

Anagnorisis

The moment of recognition or discovery (in a play, etc.)

From Latin, from Greek anagnorizein (to recognize or discover). Ultimately from Indo-European root gno- (to know) that is the ancestor of such words as know, can, notorious, notice, connoisseur, recognize, diagnosis, ignore, annotate, noble, and narrate.

If you've ever been to a movie involving two brothers separated at birth, one of whom ends up as a criminal and the other a police officer, you already know about today's word. Anagnorisis is the point near the end of the movie where the brothers face each other, notice similar lockets in other's necks (that their mother gave them at their birth) and discover that they are twins, drop their guns, and hug each other tightly.

Anagnorisis was originally the critical moment in a Greek tragedy, usually accompanied by a peripeteia (reversal), leading to the denouement of a story. An example is when Oedipus recognizes that the woman he is married to (Jocasta) is really his mother. Aristotle discussed it at length in his Poetics. He talked about many different kinds of such recognitions, e.g. by memory, by reasoning, etc. The worst, according to him, is recognition by signs, such as scars, birthmarks, tokens, etc.