reflection

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle French reflexion, reflection, and its source Late Latin reflexio, from the participle stem of reflectō. The current spelling is influenced by reflect.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɹɪˈflɛkʃən/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Hyphenation: re‧flec‧tion
  • Rhymes: -ɛkʃən

Noun

reflection (countable and uncountable, plural reflections)

  1. The act of reflecting or the state of being reflected.
  2. The property of a propagated wave being thrown back from a surface (such as a mirror).
  3. Something, such as an image, that is reflected.
    The dog barked at his own reflection in the mirror.
  5. Careful thought or consideration.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:consideration
    After careful reflection, I have decided not to vote for that proposition.
    • 1959, Georgette Heyer, chapter 1, in The Unknown Ajax:
      But Richmond, his grandfather's darling, after one thoughtful glance cast under his lashes at that uncompromising countenance appeared to lose himself in his own reflections.
  6. A representative manifestation or outcome of a condition, trend or trait.
    Our recent results are a reflection of the progress we've made as a team.
    • 2021 November 11, “When a Logo Doesn’t Risk It All: Meta’s Brand Is Designed for Unknown Worlds”, in The New York Times‎[2], archived from the original on 4 August 2023:
      Zuckerberg said last month that the name change was a reflection of how much Facebook had evolved.
    1. (followed by on) Used to make an implied criticism.
      It is a reflection on his character that he never came back to see them.
  7. (computing) The process or mechanism of determining the capabilities of an object at run-time.
    • 2002, Java Enterprise Best Practices, O'Reilly:
      DynamicMBeanFacade uses Java's reflection API to introspect the managed resource and discover data type information for attributes.
  8. (anatomy) The folding of a part; a fold.

Derived terms

Translations

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See also

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