refer

present singular third person refers · participle present referring · participle past referred · past referred

1. transitiveTo direct the attention of (someone toward something).

   The shop assistant referred me to the help desk on ground floor.

2. transitiveTo submit to (another person or group) for consideration; to send or direct elsewhere.

   He referred the matter to the principal.

   2 more examples

   The doctor may refer patients to a psychiatrist.

   I'll refer the objections back to management for reconsideration.

   Synonyms: send

3. transitiveTo place in or under by a mental or rational process; to assign to, as a class, a cause, source, a motive, reason, or ground of explanation.

   He referred the phenomena to electrical disturbances.

   1 more example

   The Nandi of British East Africa tell a story in which the origin of death is referred to the ill-humour of a dog, who brought the tidings of immortality to men, but, not being received with the deference due to so august an embassy, he changed his tune in a huff and doomed mankind to the sad fate to which they have ever since been subject.

   1918, James George Frazer, Folk-Lore In The Old Testament, volume 1, page 54

4. intransitiveTo mention (something); to direct attention (to something).

   To explain the problem, the teacher referred to an example in another textbook.

   5 more examples

   Her counsel has complained of the charge of the judge, as unprecedented, an innovation on our rules of practice, misconstructive of the true meaning of the law, and referring to laws not applicable to the sale.

   1854, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Louisiana, page 444

   She became disrespectfully referred to locally as the "Crab" on account of her extraordinary manoeuvrability.

   1956 February, R. C. Riley, “The Lymington Railway and Isle of Wight Ferry”, in Railway Magazine, page 82

   A provision of law may not be construed as requiring a new grant to be awarded to a specified non-Federal Government entity unless that provision of law (1) specifically refers to this subsection; specifically identifies the particular non-Federal Government entity involved; and (3) specifically states that the award to that entity is required by such provision of law in contravention of the policy set forth in subsection (a).

   1994, Congress of the United States, United States Statutes at Large, volume 108, part 4

   All hanar have two names. The Face Name is known to the world; the Soul Name is kept for use among close friends and relations. Hanar never refer to themselves in the first person in conversation with someone they know on a Face Name basis. To do so is considered egotistical, so instead they refer to themselves as "this one", or the impersonal "it".

   2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Hanar Codex entry

   Nonetheless, for many years afterward, she was often referred to as maharani, though that eventually gave way to the less glamorous but more respectful title of rajmata, the equivalent of queen mother.

   2009 July 31, Bruce Weber, “Gayatri Devi, 90, a Maharani and a Lawmaker, Dies”, in The New York Times

5. intransitivestativeTo make reference to; to be about; to relate to; to regard; to allude to.

   The recipe referred to several unusual ingredients.

6. grammarTo be referential to another element in a sentence.
7. intransitivecomputingTo point to either a specific location in computer memory or to a specific object.

   In C, the pointer obtained by &a refers to the variable a.

   1 more example

   Hence, the precise number of bytes to which the pointer refers to is not known. The compiler must know the number of bytes to which a pointer refers to in order to apply dereference operation

   2010 September 28, Ajay Mittal, Programming In C: A Practical Approach, Pearson Education India, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 201

8. transitiveeducationTo require to resit an examination.

   Smith's marks in the finals were unsatisfactory and he was referred.

9. intransitiveTo have the meaning of, to denote.

   The nickname "Big Apple" refers to the city of New York.

   2 more examples

   In programming, a "memory leak" refers to a situation where memory is or stays unnecessarily allocated.

   The basic idea is that two sets A and B have the same cardinality if there is a bijection from A to B. Since the domain and range of the bijection is not relevant here, we often refer to a bijection from A to B as a bijection between the sets, or a one-to-one correspondence between the elements of the sets.

   2013, William F. Basener, Topology and Its Applications, unnumbered page

10. transitivemedicineTo cause (pain) to be felt elsewhere.

    Inferior head refers pain to the TMJ area and the superior head refers pain to the zygomatic area.

    2021, Ravikiran Ongole et al., Textbook of Oral Medicine, Oral Diagnosis and Oral Radiology, page 206

    1 more example

    The gluteus medius and minimus muscles are important hip abductors […] TrPs in these muscles may produce local pain … or may refer pain down the posterior or lateral thigh and leg …

    2015, César Fernández-de-las-Peñas, Joshua Cleland, Jan Dommerholt, Manual Therapy for Musculoskeletal Pain Syndromes, page 726

11. medicineTo apparently relocate; to be felt in another place than where it is actually caused.

    Pain from the hip often refers to the knee.

    2007, Donald E. Greydanus, Arthur N. Feinberg, Dilip R. Patel, The Pediatric Diagnostic Examination, page 316

plural refers

1. journalismA blurb on the front page of a newspaper issue or section that refers the reader to the full story inside the issue or section by listing its slug or headline and its page number.

   Looking at the refers on page 2, it's obvious that May became something of an accidental women's issue.

   2017 May 28, Amanda May Aruani, “Letter from the Editor”, in The Arts Paper, New Haven, Connecticut: The Arts Council of Greater New Haven, via Issuu, archived from the original on 12 Sep 2021, page 3

   2 more examples

   A refer on page 1 of the Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2015, edition of The Herald-News contained incorrect information about the story “Neighbors at odds over Joliet liquor license” that appeared on Page 4 of the same edition.

   2015 August 5, “Corrections”, in The Herald-News, Joliet, Illinois: Shaw Media, via Issuu, page 2

   The paper of Sept. 11 was not without its alarms. On Page One, an ominous “refer” (pronounced reefer) to an article inside the paper: Palestinian snipers had killed two Israelis, bringing a retaliatory shelling by Israeli tanks. On A3: A suicide bomber had killed two police officers in Istanbul.

   2021 September 10, Ralph Blumenthal, “A Time Capsule in Two Front Pages”, in The New York Times, New York City