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Definitions

refract

[ri-frakt] / rɪˈfrækt /


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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Our legal institutions and the broader culture refract their policy values back at each other.

From Slate ● May 26, 2026

Apparently, a lot of folks feel seeing people in the real world is too taxing, and it's easier to refract your urge for connection to an app that offers only an inch-deep simulacrum.

From Salon ● Jan. 19, 2025

The same physics that makes light refract into patterns on the bottom of a swimming pool or causes stars to twinkle in the night sky also causes DISS.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 26, 2024

“We mourn her loss but it’s a comfort to know that her penetrating works will dazzle, shine and refract in the minds of readers for generations to come,” Farmer said.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 17, 2023

They refract it through their glasses so she cannot see, so she cannot identify the guilty ones.

From "Dreaming in Cuban" by Cristina García

To work around this, I decided to use a 'star filter' - a layer of glass attached to the front of the lens that refracts light in a specific way.

From BBC ● Dec. 25, 2025

We might be told that color has something to do with light, or even be shown a prism, through which light refracts to produce a rainbow.

From Salon ● Nov. 16, 2024

In the retina of an animal's eye, there is a small pit called the fovea that refracts the light entering the eye.

From Science Daily ● May 30, 2024

The water vapor refracts the intense glare of headlights back toward the driver in a way that actually decreases visibility.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 11, 2023

Sunlight refracts through it and casts slivers of rainbows across the floor.

From "Allegiant" by Veronica Roth

It’s enough to make a reader hanker for a volume devoted to the director’s long working relationship with Head or for a filmography refracted through the actresses he obsessed over and glorified.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2025

These machines shoot UV light tens of thousands of times through drops of molten tin, which creates a plasma, and is then refracted through a series of specialised mirrors.

From BBC ● May 18, 2025

Still, there’s also something kind of profound in contemplating 2000, even if it is refracted through this movie’s silly lens.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 2024

The reddish color comes from the light being refracted by particles in the atmosphere.

From Slate ● Apr. 5, 2024

This colour is refracted a second time, but it remains a fine beam of light and its hue is unchanged.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

Mr. Self has great fun refracting the details of who did what to whom and where.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 20, 2026

Democritus believed that light refracting through atoms caused the phenomenon that we perceive and describe conventionally, or by mutual agreement, as color.

From Salon ● Nov. 16, 2024

Smartphones can act as anxiety incubators, amplifying the sense of abundant possibility like a prism refracting light.

From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2024

Light travels at different speeds when passing through different media -- air, water, the human eye -- and those changes in speed correspond to the light refracting, or bending, at different angles.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 23, 2023

I wondered if there was a big fire somewhere, but in the morning Lori told me that the orange glow came from the air pollution refracting the light off the streets and buildings.

From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls


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