Word.ws English Dictionary

referential

/ɹɛfəˈɹɛnʃəl/

referential adjective: of a word or phrase applied to a particular person, place, or thing and not to any other.

Adjective

referential (not comparable)

  1. Of a word or phrase applied to a particular person, place, or thing and not to any other.
  2. Of or relating to a referent.
    • Thus, the referential location of “town” in an utterance “Went to town”, is simply to be conceived as that location which might also be referred to by “there”, “the place we visited last Thursday”, “your birthplace”, etc.2011, James Dickins, Extended Axiomatic Linguistics, Walter de Gruyter, page 108
  3. Of or relating to reference or allusion.
    • Above all, the referential approach has proved durable and especially flexible.1990, Gerald Mead, “The Representation of Fictional Character”, in Style, volume 24, number 3, Penn State UP, →JSTOR, page 441
    • In the first place, it must be pointed out that the bond with the past is inferential rather than referential.1991, David Herzberger, “Social Realism and the Contingencies of History in the Contemporary Spanish Novel”, in Hispanic Review, volume 59, number 2, U of Pennsylvania P, →JSTOR, page 161
  4. Serving as a reference.

Examples of referential in a sentence

  • Many Native American songs employ vocables, syllables that do not have referential meaning.
  • It just lacks certain conditions that a place should have, such as a name and a referential reality.
  • If there is no DP in the 'strict' sense, the question arises as how Chinese encodes argumenthood and referential properties.

All 11 example sentences with referential

Origin of referential

From reference + -ial.

Words formed from referential

Questions about referential

What does referential mean?
Referential means of a word or phrase applied to a particular person, place, or thing and not to any other.
What part of speech is referential?
Referential is an adjective.
How do you pronounce referential?
Referential is pronounced /ɹɛfəˈɹɛnʃəl/.

Words near referential in the dictionary

  1. referendaryships
  2. referends
  3. referendum
  4. referendums
  5. referent
  6. referential
  7. referential integrity
  8. referential opacity
  9. referential transparency
  10. referentialism
  11. referentialist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: referential (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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