reflection

• reflexion

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

• IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈflɛkʃən/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: re‧flec‧tion
• Rhymes: -ɛkʃən

A water reflection - meanings 2 and 3

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.

4. 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.

5. 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, archived from the original on 2023-08-04:

     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.

6. (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.

7. (anatomy) The folding of a part; a fold.

• reflect
• reflective
• reflector

• refraction
• diffraction