index of refraction

1. 1.

   the ratio of the velocity of light in a vacuum to that in a medium

   Synonymsrefractive index

   Broaderratio

Questions about index of refraction

What does index of refraction mean?

index of refraction means "the ratio of the velocity of light in a vacuum to that in a medium".

What is another word for index of refraction?

Close synonyms include refractive index. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is index of refraction a common word?

index of refraction is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.