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Reflect vs Realize - What's the difference?

reflect | realize |

In transitive terms the difference between reflect and realize

is that reflect is to give evidence of someone's or something's character etc while realize is to cause to seem real; to impress upon the mind as actual; to feel vividly or strongly; to make one's own in apprehension or experience.

reflect

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • To bend back (light, etc.) from a surface.
  • A mirror reflects the light that shines on it.
  • To be bent back (light, etc.) from a surface.
  • The moonlight reflected from the surface of water.
  • To mirror, or show the image of something.
  • The shop window reflected his image as he walked past.
  • To be mirrored.
  • His image reflected from the shop window as he walked past.
  • To agree with; to closely follow.
  • Entries in English dictionaries aim to reflect common usage.
  • To give evidence of someone's or something's character etc.
  • The team's victory reflects the Captain's abilities.
    The teacher's ability reflects well on the school.
  • *
  • With fresh material, taxonomic conclusions are leavened by recognition that the material examined reflects the site it occupied; a herbarium packet gives one only a small fraction of the data desirable for sound conclusions. Herbarium material does not, indeed, allow one to extrapolate safely: what you see is what you get
  • (senseid) To think seriously; to ponder or consider.
  • People do that sort of thing every day, without ever stopping to reflect on the consequences.
  • * 1985 , , Option Lock , page 229:
  • Not for the first time, he reflected that it was not so much the speeches that strained the nerves as the palaver that went with them.

    Synonyms

    * See also
    Derived terms
    * reflective * reflexion * unreflective * nonreflective * reflectorize

    realize

    English

    Alternative forms

    * realise (non-Oxford British spelling)

    Verb

    (realiz)
  • To make real; to convert from the imaginary or fictitious into the actual; to bring into concrete existence; to accomplish.
  • * (rfdate) (w)
  • We realize what Archimedes had only in hypothesis, weighting a single grain against the globe of earth.
  • To become aware of a fact or situation.
  • *
  • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or
  • To cause to seem real; to impress upon the mind as actual; to feel vividly or strongly; to make one's own in apprehension or experience.
  • * 1887 , Sir (Arthur Conan Doyle), (A Study in Scarlet) , II:
  • That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
  • * (rfdate), (Benjamin Jowett).
  • Many coincidences . . . soon begin to appear in them [Greek inscriptions] which realize ancient history to us.
  • * (rfdate),
  • We can not realize it in thought, that the object . . . had really no being at any past moment.
  • (business) To acquire as an actual possession; to obtain as the result of plans and efforts; to gain; to get
  • * (rfdate) (Macaulay)
  • Knighthood was not beyond the reach of any man who could by diligent thrift realize a good estate.
  • (transitive, business, finance) To convert any kind of property into money, especially property representing investments, as shares, bonds, etc.
  • * (rfdate) (Washington Irving)
  • Wary men took the alarm, and began to realize , a word now first brought into use to express the conversion of ideal property into something real.
  • (transitive, business, obsolete) To convert into real property; to make real estate of.
  • Synonyms

    * (to convert to actuality) accomplish, actualize

    Derived terms

    * realizable * realization

    References

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