React

How to spell react

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce react

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does react mean?

1. verbTo respond to something that has happened or been said.

React in a sentence

• Investors tend to react quickly to any change in interest rates.

• He tried not to react when his colleague criticised the report.

Where does react come from?

Language of origin: Latin

React combines the prefix re-, meaning 'back' or 'again', with 'act', which traces to the Latin verb agere, 'to do, drive, or set in motion', through its past participle actus. The compound was modelled on the medieval Latin reagere, literally 'to act back' or 'to drive in return', a term that surfaced in the technical writing of natural philosophers. It entered English in the seventeenth century, first in the precise scientific sense of one body or force exerting an opposite action on another, the idea later fixed in Newton's law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. From this physical core the word broadened into chemistry, where substances 'act back' on one another, and then into everyday speech for any response to an event or stimulus. The straightforward re- plus act structure is exactly why the spelling is reliable: there is no hidden letter, just two familiar pieces joined together.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• act (from Latin agere: to do, drive)