Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use refer in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb, noun

Refer means to direct the attention of (someone toward something). Example: “The shop assistant referred me to the help desk on ground floor.”

Examples of refer by meaning

verbTo direct the attention of (someone toward something).

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

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

verbTo place in or under by a mental or rational process; to assign to, as a class, a cause, source, a motive, reason, or...

  • He referred the phenomena to electrical disturbances.

verbTo mention (something); to direct attention (to something).

  • To explain the problem, the teacher referred to an example in another textbook.
  • 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
  • Hanar never refer to themselves in the first person in conversation with someone they know on a Face Name basis.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Hanar Codex entry

verbTo make reference to; to be about; to relate to; to regard; to allude to.

  • The recipe referred to several unusual ingredients.

verbTo 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.
  • Hence, the precise number of bytes to which the pointer refers to is not known.2010 September, Ajay Mittal, Programming In C: A Practical Approach, Pearson Education India, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 201

verbTo require to resit an examination.

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

verbTo 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.
  • 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

More sentences with refer

  • He's the sort of lowlife who snorts coke and refers to it as his girl.From the entry girl
  • Without context, I can't tell if dish refers to a plate, or to the food served thereon.From the entry context
  • The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives officers are just simply referred to as "ATF agents".From the entry agent
  • Typically refers to a multi-layered work, e.g.: new ads covering old on a roadside sign.From the entry palimpsest
  • The term Navajo Nation refers both to the people and to their territory.From the entry nation
  • I refer to your letter of the 16th instant in regard to traffic disruption.From the entry instant
  • The cadence in a galliard step refers to the final leap in a cinquepace sequence.From the entry cadence
  • The term 'bean' originally referred to the seed of the broad bean.From the entry broad bean
  • The British government is often referred to by the metonymic expression "Downing Street".From the entry metonymic
  • They referred to de Gaulle as a chienlit, a totally untranslatable term that suggests defecation in bed.From the entry untranslatable
  • What you call “God” they refer to agnostically as “the universe.”From the entry agnostically
  • The captain rarely referred to his wardroom for advice, and this resulted in their discontent.From the entry wardroom
  • Loose nodular deposits of gold metal are commonly referred to as nuggets.From the entry nodular
  • Helen Thomas is frequently referred to as "the doyenne of the White House press corps".From the entry doyenne
  • MIS 3 is used to refer to the period between 57 and 70 thousand years ago.From the entry MIS
  • The salvifical nature of Jesus' death is frequently referred to throughout Christian literature.From the entry salvifical
  • The Native American had a kinship with nature, even referring to Mother Earth and Brother Bear.From the entry brother
  • Programming languages with lazy evaluation support corecursion so that the programmer can refer to infinite objects.From the entry corecursion
  • The Clevelander took offense to his city being referred to as the "Mistake by the Lake".From the entry Clevelander
  • In the wikiverse, the word "contributions" refers to edits done to a wiki.From the entry wikiverse
  • Compounds from which bases are released by heating are referred to as thermolatent bases.From the entry thermolatent
  • Many individuals in infidelity recovery forums refer to the third party as the affair partner.From the entry affair partner
  • In Romanian, all articles, adjectives, and pronouns agree in gender, number and case with the noun they refer to.From the entry agree
  • Due to Greek objections, North Macedonia was often referred to as the "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" for many years.From the entry Yugoslav
  • That term refers strictly to smaller birds.From the entry strictly

Meaning of refer

  1. verb To direct the attention of (someone toward something).
  2. verb To submit to (another person or group) for consideration; to send or direct elsewhere.
  3. verb 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.

Full definition of refer

Questions about refer in a sentence

How do you use refer in a sentence?
Refer is used as a verb and noun. For example: “The shop assistant referred me to the help desk on ground floor.”
What is a short sentence with refer?
“He referred the matter to the principal.”
What does refer mean?
Refer means to direct the attention of (someone toward something).

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: refer (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use refer in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/refer. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.