Reckoning means a moment when you must face the consequences of your actions or when the truth becomes clear. If you've been putting off studying all semester, the final exam becomes a reckoning where your choices catch up with you. When a dishonest business owner's deceptions are finally exposed, that's their reckoning.

The word carries weight because it suggests something inevitable: you can delay a reckoning, but you can't avoid it forever. In old Western movies, when two rivals finally meet for a showdown, that's often called a reckoning. The word implies that accounts must be settled, truths must be acknowledged, or justice must be served.

Reckoning also means calculating or figuring something out. A ship's captain might use dead reckoning to estimate their position by calculating the distance and direction traveled. When you're trying to figure out how many slices of pizza each person gets at a party, you're doing a reckoning of sorts.

The phrase “day of reckoning” refers to that future moment when all your choices and actions will be judged or will have consequences.