What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Reflective vs Contemplative - What's the difference?

reflective | contemplative |

As adjectives the difference between reflective and contemplative

is that reflective is something which reflects, or redirects back to the source while contemplative is inclined to contemplate; introspective and thoughtful; meditative.

As a noun contemplative is

someone who has dedicated themselves to religious contemplation.

reflective

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Something which reflects, or redirects back to the source.
    • Mirrors are reflective .
  • Thinking back on the past.
    • He always becomes reflective in preparation for the new year.
  • (computing, programming) Involving reflection.

    • Derived terms

    * unreflective

    Coordinate terms

    * refractive

    contemplative

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Inclined to contemplate; introspective and thoughtful; meditative.
  • * 1873 , (John Stuart Mill), Autobiography , Chapter 5:
    • Compared with the greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation. This cultivation Wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets who are intrinsically far more poets than he.
  • Pertaining especially to a contemplative Roman Catholic religious or one of the contemplative Roman Catholic religious orders.
  • * 1870 , (Charles Dickens), The Mystery of Edwin Drood , Chapter 3:
    • Whether the nuns of yore, being of a submissive rather than a stiff-necked generation, habitually bent their contemplative heads to avoid collision with the beams in the low ceilings of the many chambers of their House [...] may be matters of interest to its haunting ghosts (if any), but constitute no item in Miss Twinkleton's half-yearly accounts.
  • Relating to, or having the power of, contemplation.
    • contemplative faculties

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Someone who has dedicated themselves to religious contemplation.
  • * 2009 , (Karen Armstrong), The Case for God , Vintage 2010, p. 112:
    • The contemplative must not expect exotic feelings, visions or heavenly voices; these did not come from God but from his own fevered imagination and would merely distract him from his true objective [...].
    ----