refer

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.

(verb):

• (Received Pronunciation, General Australian) IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈfɜː/
• (US) enPR: rī-fûr, IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈfɝ/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• (Scotland) IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈfɛr/
• (New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈføː/
• (Liverpool, fair–fur merger) IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈfeː/
• (Humberside, Teesside, fair–fur merger) IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈfɛː/
• (Lancashire, fair–fur merger) IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈfɜː(ɹ)/
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: re‧fer

(noun):

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɹiːfə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈɹiːfɝ/

  • Audio (General Australian):

    (file)

• Homophone: reefer
• Rhymes: -iːfə(ɹ)

refer (third-person singular simple present refers, present participle referring, simple past and past participle referred)

1. (transitive) To direct the attention of (someone toward something)

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

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

   Synonym: send

   He referred the matter to the principal.

   The doctor may refer patients to a psychiatrist.

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

3. (transitive) 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.

4. (intransitive) To mention (something); to direct attention (to something)

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

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

     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.

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

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

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

     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).

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

     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".

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

     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.

5. (intransitive, stative) To make reference to; to be about; to relate to; to regard; to allude to.

   The recipe referred to several unusual ingredients.

6. (grammar) To be referential to another element in a sentence.

   (Can we add an example for this sense?)

7. (intransitive, programming) 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.

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

     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

8. (transitive, education) To require to resit an examination.

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

9. (intransitive, of a term or name) 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.

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

     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.

• delegate
• direct

• cross-refer
• refer to
• refer someone to
• refer someone to the reply given in Arkell v Pressdram

refer (plural refers)

1. (journalism) 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.
   • 2015 August 5, “Corrections”, in The Herald-News‎, Joliet, Illinois: Shaw Media, via Issuu, page 2:

     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.

   • 2017 May, 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 September 2021, page 3:

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

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

     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.

• refer on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Ferre, Freer, Frere, freer

From re- +‎ fer (“to do”).

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic)
• IPA^(key): (Valencia)

• Audio (Catalonia):

  (file)

refer (first-person singular present refaig, first-person singular preterite refiu, past participle refet)

1. (transitive) to redo, to do again
2. (pronominal) to recover, to get better to regain one's strength

   Et refaràs aviat.

   You'll get better soon.

• “refer”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies , 2007 April
• “refer”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2025.
• “refer” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “refer” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

refer

1. second-person singular present active imperative of referō