Other forms: refreshing, refreshed, refreshes
To refresh is to make something new and lively again. Refresh the page, refresh your memory, feel refreshed.
On a screen, to refresh is to reload — and the pull-to-refresh gesture is one of the most-repeated actions in modern life. Refresh your memory is a fixed phrase, used constantly in courts. It also means to restore somebody's energy: a refreshing sleep, feel refreshed. Note refreshments, meaning food and drink at an event; and refreshing, which of an opinion means welcome because it is unusual.
1verbrefreshTo make something new and lively again, or to reload.
“A cool shower refreshed me after the long, hot journey.”
2verbrestoreTo restore somebody's energy.
“Nine hours of sleep refreshed him more than a fortnight off.”
refresh is a renewing.
Old French refrescher is re- plus fresche, fresh, from a Germanic word. Refreshing something is making it fresh again, and the computing sense is the plainest possible use of that.
Old French
refrescher — to refresh
Middle English
refreshen
English, today
refresh
From Middle English refreshen, refreschen, refrisschen, from Old French refrescher (“to refresh”) (modern French rafraîchir), equivalent to re + fresh.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA