refer.
To direct the attention of (someone toward something).
Meaning & usage
To direct the attention of (someone toward something).
The shop assistant referred me to the help desk on ground floor.
To submit to (another person or group) for consideration; to send or direct elsewhere.
He referred the matter to the principal.
The doctor may refer patients to a psychiatrist.
To 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.
To mention (something); to direct attention (to something).
To explain the problem, the teacher referred to an example in another textbook.
To make reference to; to be about; to relate to; to regard; to allude to.
The recipe referred to several unusual ingredients.
To be referential to another element in a sentence.
To 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.
To require to resit an examination.
Smith's marks in the finals were unsatisfactory and he was referred.
To have the meaning of, to denote.
The nickname "Big Apple" refers to the city of New York.
In programming, a "memory leak" refers to a situation where memory is or stays unnecessarily allocated.
To cause (pain) to be felt elsewhere.
To apparently relocate; to be felt in another place than where it is actually caused.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English referren, from Old French referer, from Latin referre. The noun (used in journalism) is from the verb. Doublet of relate. See also infer, collate and confer, delate and defer, as well as prelate and prefer among others.
A 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.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English referren, from Old French referer, from Latin referre. The noun (used in journalism) is from the verb. Doublet of relate. See also infer, collate and confer, delate and defer, as well as prelate and prefer among others.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.