Refer: Definition and part of speech

Refer

  1. v. i. To direct inquiry for information or a guarantee of any kind, as in respect to one’s integrity, capacity, pecuniary ability, and the like; as, I referred to his employer for the truth of his story.
  2. v. t. To carry or send back.
  3. v. t. Hence: To send or direct away; to send or direct elsewhere, as for treatment, aid, information, decision, etc.; to make over, or pass over, to another; as, to refer a student to an author; to refer a beggar to an officer; to refer a bill to a committee; a court refers a matter of fact to a commissioner for investigation, or refers a question of law to a superior tribunal.
  4. v. t. 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; as, he referred the phenomena to electrical disturbances.
  5. v. i. To have recourse; to apply; to appeal; to betake one’s self; as, to refer to a dictionary.
  6. v. i. To have relation or reference; to relate; to point; as, the figure refers to a footnote.
  7. v. i. To carry the mind or thought; to direct attention; as, the preacher referred to the late election.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.

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