Other forms: refracted, refracting, refracts
To refract is to bend light as it passes into another material. Light refracts, refracted through the prism, refract the beam.
It happens because light travels at different speeds in different materials, and the bend is why a straw looks broken in a glass of water. Different colours bend by different amounts, which is what a prism separates and what makes a rainbow. Note that the Latin means to break back.
1verbrefractTo bend light as it passes into another material.
“Water refracts light, so a straw in a glass looks bent.”
refract is a bending of light.
Latin refringere is re plus frangere, to break. Fracture, fragment and fraction come from the same breaking.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰreg-
Latin
refrāctum
English, today
refract
Built from
From Latin refrāctum, neuter form of refrāctus, the past participle of refringō, itself from re- (“again”) + frangō (“to break”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA