Definition of "refract" [re•fract]

• To deflect (light, for example) from a straight path by refraction. (verb-transitive)
• To alter by viewing through a medium: "In the Quartet reality is refracted through a variety of eyes” ( Elizabeth Kastor). (verb-transitive)
• Medicine To determine the refraction of (an eye, for example). (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Anna half imagined that the stars were flickering: since there was no atmosphere to refract their light, they were being distorted by cloaking fields."
• "Did they feel any sense of conflict between reporting the truth and the obligation to refract the world through rose-tinted lenses?"
• "It was a simple but adequate affair: a fire built in the snow; alongside, their sleeping-furs spread in a single bed on a mat of spruce boughs; behind the bed an oblong of canvas stretched to refract the heat."