Diffract

verb

verb ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To cause diffraction transitive

    "Dave frowned as he tried to answer. "Well, I suppose the atmosphere is oxygen and nitrogen, mostly; then there's the ionosphere and the ozone layer. As I remember, the color of the sky is due to the scattering of light—light rays being diffracted in the air.""

  2. 2
    undergo diffraction wordnet
  3. 3
    To undergo diffraction intransitive

Synonyms

All synonyms
bendbiasbranch outbroadcastcrookcurve

Example

More examples

"Dave frowned as he tried to answer. "Well, I suppose the atmosphere is oxygen and nitrogen, mostly; then there's the ionosphere and the ozone layer. As I remember, the color of the sky is due to the scattering of light—light rays being diffracted in the air.""

Etymology

From Latin diffractus (“past participle of diffringo (“to shatter, to break into pieces”)”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.