REFLEXION • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Reflexion

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noun

Reflection n. (Written also reflexion)

1.

The act of reflecting, or turning or sending back, or the state of being reflected. Specifically:

(a)

The return of rays, beams, sound, or the like, from a surface. See Angle of reflection, below. "The eye sees not itself, But by reflection, by some other things."

(b)

The reverting of the mind to that which has already occupied it; continued consideration; meditation; contemplation; hence, also, that operation or power of the mind by which it is conscious of its own acts or states; the capacity for judging rationally, especially in view of a moral rule or standard. "By reflection,... I would be understood to mean, that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them, by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the understanding." "This delight grows and improves under thought and reflection."

2.

Shining; brightness, as of the sun. (Obs.)

3.

That which is produced by reflection. Specifically:

(a)

An image given back from a reflecting surface; a reflected counterpart. "As the sun water we can bear, Yet not the sun, but his reflection, there."

(b)

A part reflected, or turned back, at an angle; as, the reflection of a membrane.

(c)

Result of meditation; thought or opinion after attentive consideration or contemplation; especially, thoughts suggested by truth. "Job's reflections on his once flourishing estate did at the same time afflict and encourage him."

4.

Censure; reproach cast. "He died; and oh! may no reflection shed Its poisonous venom on the royal dead."

5.

(Physiol.) The transference of an excitement from one nerve fiber to another by means of the nerve cells, as in reflex action. See Reflex action, under Reflex.

Angle of reflection, the angle which anything, as a ray of light, on leaving a reflecting surface, makes with the perpendicular to the surface.

Angle of total reflection. (Opt.) Same as Critical angle, under Critical.

Synonyms: Meditation; contemplation; rumination; cogitation; consideration; musing; thinking.

Reflexion n. See Reflection.

See images of 'Reflexion'

Etymology of 'Reflexion'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Reflexion" Quotes from Famous Books

... involved in his having cast a spell upon the simpler, the very simplest, forms of attention. This is all he is entitled to; he is entitled to nothing, he is bound to admit, that can come to him, from the reader, as a result on the latter's part of any act of reflexion or discrimination. He may ENJOY this finer tribute—that is another affair, but on condition only of taking it as a gratuity "thrown in," a mere miraculous windfall, the fruit of a tree he may not pretend to have shaken. Against ...

— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... Pemberton. Indeed the whole mystic volume in which the boy had been amateurishly bound demanded some practice in translation. To-day, after a considerable interval, there is something phantasmagoria, like a prismatic reflexion or a serial novel, in Pemberton's memory of the queerness of the Moreens. If it were not for a few tangible tokens—a lock of Morgan's hair cut by his own hand, and the half-dozen letters received from him when ...

— The Pupil • Henry James

... to each other, have at the bottom of their hearts, the one that faint desire for virtue, the other that faint desire for libertinism which Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the first to have the courage to diagnose. In one, it is a last reflexion of the ray divine that is not extinct; in the other, it is the last remains of ...

— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... and supply, where does the vicious circle begin and end? Certain it is that when motors began to drench the countryside in dust and suppress reflexion by providing our afterthoughts with transport, Dalmatians disappeared. Silently, imperceptibly, putting down their paws with all the old fastidious grace, they crept out of a world that had betrayed aristocracy. Only Fido remained—to ...

— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... reference to the life and the circumstances of the sun, and our first steps towards an understanding of them are helped on by such nature poetry as the Lettish, which has not yet been obscured by artistic and poetical reflexion. In that poetry mythical personalities confessedly belonging to a solar sphere are transferred to a large number of poetical representatives, of which the explanation must consequently be found in the same (solar) sphere of nature. My method here is just the same as that applied ...

— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

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