Reflective

//ɹɪˈflɛktɪv// adj

adj ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    That reflects, or redirects back to the source.

    "Mirrors are reflective."

  2. 2
    Pondering, especially thinking back on the past.

    "He always becomes reflective in preparation for the new year."

  3. 3
    That reveals or shows; revealing; indicative of.

    "Both brides and grooms in native Hawaiian tradition wear flower garlands as a physical manifestation of their love for one another, and to some, the twining of the stems is reflective of two families now becoming one. A more tourist-friendly version established in the past couple of decades involves winding the leis around the couple’s hands to bind them together."

  4. 4
    Involving reflection.
  5. 5
    By means of reflection.

    "In JIT compilation, the running program is reflectively modified by an embedded compiler, which only uses two reflective operations […]"

Show 1 more definition
  1. 6
    Reciprocal.
Adjective
  1. 1
    devoted to matters of the mind wordnet
  2. 2
    capable of physically reflecting light or sound wordnet
  3. 3
    deeply or seriously thoughtful wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
meditativereflectingautocriticalautocriticalbroodingbroody

Example

More examples

"The Daguerreotype process involved combining metal particles and chemicals on a silver-covered piece of copper to reflect, or give back, images of light. This reflective process was able to produce sharp, colorless pictures."

Etymology

From reflect + -ive.

Related phrases

self-reflective

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