Other forms: mirrors, mirrored, mirroring
A mirror is a sheet of glass with a silver backing that shows you yourself. The one over the bathroom sink, the little round one in a make-up bag, the wing mirror you fold in on a narrow street.
Cars are full of them: the rear-view mirror, the wing mirrors, the mirror you check before pulling out. As a verb, to mirror is to match something closely — her career mirrors her mother's, and the rise in one graph mirrors the fall in the other. A mirror image is the same thing reversed left to right, which is why handwriting looks backwards in one. To hold a mirror up to something is to show people what it really is. And smoke and mirrors means a clever show with nothing behind it.
1nounmirrorA smooth glass or metal surface that reflects a clear image of whatever is in front of it.~75%
“She checked her collar in the mirror by the door.”
synonyms: looking glass
2nounfittedOne of the reflecting surfaces fitted to a vehicle so the driver can see behind.~2%
“He adjusted the mirror before pulling out of the space.”
3verbmatchTo be very similar to something, or to move and change in the same way as it.~21%
“The fall in sales mirrors what happened two winters ago.”
4verbshowTo show a reflection of something.~2%
“The still water mirrored the whole line of trees.”
synonyms: reflect
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 9 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
mirror is a reflecting surface.
Mirror arrived through Middle English mirour from Old French mireor, which meant something like a looker or watcher, from mirer, to look at. That came from Latin mīror, to wonder at, from mīrus, wonderful, and back to a Proto-Indo-European root *smey- meaning to laugh or be glad. So a mirror is named for the wondering, not the glass. It pushed out the older English word schewere, which also meant a spy.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)mey-
Proto-Indo-European
*smey- — to laugh, to be glad
Latin
mīror — wonder at
Old French
mireor — mirror
Middle English
mirour
English, today
mirror
Built from
From Middle English mirour, from Old French mireor (“mirror”) literally “looker, watcher”, from mirer (“look at”), from Latin mīror (“wonder at”), from mīrus (“wonderful”), from Proto-Indo-European smey- (“to laugh, to be glad”). Displaced native schewere, schawere, from sċēawere, which was also the word for "spy".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA