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reference

  (rĕf'ər-əns, rĕf'rəns) pronunciation
n.
  1. An act of referring: filed away the article for future reference.
    1. Significance in a specified context: Her speeches have special reference to environmental policy.
    2. Meaning or denotation.
  3. The state of being related or referred: with reference to; in reference to.
  4. A mention of an occurrence or situation: made frequent references to her promotion.
    1. A note in a publication referring the reader to another passage or source.
    2. The passage or source so referred to.
    3. A work frequently used as a source.
    4. A mark or footnote used to direct a reader elsewhere for additional information.
  6. Law.
    1. Submission of a case to a referee.
    2. Legal actions conducted before or by a referee.
    1. A person who is in a position to recommend another or to vouch for his or her fitness, as for a job.
    2. A statement about a person's qualifications, character, and dependability.
tr.v., -enced, -enc·ing, -ences.
  1. To supply references to: “Our memories are addressed and referenced . . . by significant fragments of their own content” (Frederick Turner).
  2. To mention in a reference; refer to: He referenced her book in his speech. See Usage Note at allude.
referencer ref'er·enc·er n.
referential ref'er·en'tial (-ə-rĕn'shəl) adj.
referentially ref'er·en'tial·ly adv.
 
 
Thesaurus: reference

noun

    A statement attesting to personal qualifications, character, and dependability: character, recommendation, testimonial. See support/oppose.

 
Philosophy Dictionary: reference

The basic case of reference is the relation between a name and the person or object which it names. The philosophical pro-blems include trying to elucidate that relation, to understand whether other semantic relations, such as that between a predicate and the property it expresses, or that between a description and what it describes, or that between myself and the word ‘I’, are examples of the same relation or of very different ones. A great deal of modern work on this was stimulated by Kripke's Naming and Necessity (1970). It would also be desirable to know whether we can refer to such things as abstract objects and how to conduct the debate about such an issue. A popular approach, following Frege, is to argue that the fundamental unit of analysis should be the whole sentence. The reference of a term becomes a derivative notion: it is whatever it is that defines the term's contribution to the truth condition of the whole sentence. There need be nothing further to say about it, given that we have a way of understanding the attribution of meanings or truth-conditions to sentences. Other approaches search for a more substantive, possibly causal or psychologically or socially constituted, relationship between words and things. See also definite descriptions, denotation, logically proper names.

 
Law Encyclopedia: Reference
This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

The process by which a tribunal sends a civil action, or a particular issue in the action, to an individual who has been appointed by the tribunal to hear and decide upon it, or to obtain evidence, and make a report to the court.

See: referee.

 
Word Tutor: reference
pronunciation

IN BRIEF: A mention, as in a book, of some other work where information can be found. Also: A person to whom questions as to another person's honesty or ability can be asked; contact.

pronunciation Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference. — Aristotle (384-322 BC)

 
Wikipedia: reference (disambiguation)
For referencing in Wikipedia, see .

In general, a reference is a relation between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. Such relations may occur in a variety of domains, including linguistics, logic, computer science, art, and scholarship. Thus, the objects to which the term reference applies may be of varying character ranging from concrete examples, such as a reference work in a library, as well as abstract objects, such as pointers in computer programming languages or symbols in language or mathematics. The nature of reference in its role in language and thought has been a prominent topic of discussion in philosophy since at least the 19th century and the logic work of J.S. Mill.[1]

An object which is named by a reference, or to which the reference points, is called a referent.

The term reference is used with different specialized meanings in a variety of fields, as follows:

Semantics

In semantics, reference is generally construed as the relation between nouns or pronouns and objects that are named by them. Hence the word John refers to John. The word it refers to some previously specified object. The object referred to is called the referent of the word. Sometimes the word-object relation is called denotation; the word denotes the object. The converse relation, the relation from object to word, is called exemplification; the object exemplifies what the word denotes. In syntactic analysis, if a word refers to a previous word, the previous word is called the antecedent.

Reference and Meaning

Frege argued that reference cannot be treated as identical with meaning: "Hesperus" (an ancient Greek name for the evening star) and "Phosphorus" (an ancient Greek name for the morning star) both refer to Venus, but the astronomical fact that '"Hesperus" is "Phosphorus"' can still be informative, even if the 'meanings' of both "Hesperus" and "Phosphorus" are already known. This problem led Frege to distinguish between the sense and reference of a word.

Absent Referent

Main article: Absent referent

Words can often be meaningful without having a referent. Fictional and mythological names such as "Bo-Peep" and "Hercules" illustrate this possibility.

Following from the argument that one cannot directly experience the divine (e.g. God), the sign "God" can serve as an example of a reference with an absent referent. Additionally, certain sects of Judaism and other religions consider it sinful to write, discard, or deface the name of the divine. To avoid this problem, the signifier G-d is sometimes used, which is a sign which refers to another sign with an absent referent.

In Mathematics, the absent referent can be seen with the symbol for zero, "0" or the empty set, "{ }".

Linguistic Sign

The semantic sign can be considered a subset of a more general concept, the linguistic sign, first elucidated by Ferdinand de Saussure‎. A sign contains two parts, the signified (a thought which represents an object), and the signifier (the sound or written word). Both have a referent (the actual physical object).


Art

In Art, a reference is an item from which a work is based. This may include an existing artwork, a reproduced (i.e. photo) or directly observed (i.e. person) object, or the artist's memory.

Scientific writing

In scientific writing, a reference is a previously published written work within academic publishing which is used as a source for theory or claims referred to which are used in the text. References contain complete bibliographic information so the interested reader can find them in a library. References can be added either at the end of the publication, or as footnotes.

Computer science

Main article: reference (computer science)

In computer science, references are datatypes which refer to an object elsewhere in memory, and are used to construct a wide variety of data structures such as linked lists. Most programming languages support some form of reference.

The [[C++]] programming language has a specific type of reference also referred to as a reference; see [[reference (C++)]].

Geometry

A reference point is a location used to describe another one, by giving the relative position. Similarly we have the concept of frame of reference (both in physics and figuratively), benchmark (in surveying and figuratively), etc.

Libraries

In a library, the word reference may refer to a dictionary, encyclopedia, or other reference work that contains many brief articles that cover a broad scope of knowledge in one book, or a set of books. However, the word reference is also used to mean a book that cannot be taken from the room, or from the building. Many of the books in the reference department of a library are reference works, but some are books that are simply too large or valuable to loan out. Conversely, selected reference works may be shelved with other circulating books, and may be loaned out.

References to any type of printed matter come in electronic or at least machine-readable form nowadays. For books there exists the ISBN, for journal articles, the digital object identifier (DOI) is gaining relevance. Printed information on the Internet is usually referred to by some kind of uniform resource identifier (URI).

Scholarship

In scholarship, a reference may be a citation of a text that has been used in the creation of a piece of work such as an essay, report, or oration. Its primary purpose is to allow people who read such work to examine the author's sources, either for validity, or simply to learn more about the subject. Such items are often listed at the end of an article or book in a section marked Bibliography or in a section marked References. A Bibliography section will often contain work not cited by the author, but used as background reading or listed as potentially useful to the reader. A section labelled References should contain all and only work cited in the main text.

Copying of material by another author without proper citation or without required permissions amounts to 'plagiarism'.

Personal references

In the labour market, a reference is a letter to a prospective employer regarding a job applicant's characteristics. Usually the person providing the reference - the referee - is a previous boss, or someone of some distinction in government, the clergy, or education, who can personally vouch for the applicant's employability; see also credit reference.

Canadian law

Main article: reference question

A Reference question, or "Reference" is a procedure through which the government of Canada can submit legal questions to the Supreme Court of Canada and provincial governments to the provincial courts of appeal.

See also

References

  1. ^ Reimer, Marga. "Reference". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2003 Edition). Edward N. Zalta (ed.). http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reference

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
Misspellings: reference

Common misspelling(s) of reference

  • refference
  • referrence

 
Translations: Translations for: Reference

Dansk (Danish)
n. - henvisning, reference, citat
v. tr. - forsyne med henvisninger

idioms:

  • for future reference    til fremtidig brug
  • reference book    håndbog, opslagsværk
  • reference library    håndbibliotek
  • reference mark    tegn, der henviser til fodnote

Nederlands (Dutch)
verwijzing, referentie, raadpleging, toespeling, renvooi, opdracht/ bevoegdheid (van commissie etc.), verband, van verwijzingen voorzien, naslag-, dienende als standaard (maat etc.)

Français (French)
n. - référence, allusion, consultation (dans une bibliothèque), considération, prise en compte, (Imprim) référence, renvoi, (Comm) référence, des références, personne pouvant fournir des références, (Ling) référence, (Géog) coordonnées
v. tr. - fournir les sources de

idioms:

  • for future reference    pour future référence
  • reference book    ouvrage de référence
  • reference library    bibliothèque de référence
  • reference mark    point de référence

Deutsch (German)
n. - Verweis, Zeugnis, Referenz
v. - mit Verweisen ausstatten

idioms:

  • for future reference    für spätere Verwendung
  • reference book    Nachschlagewerk
  • reference library    Präsenzbibliothek
  • reference mark    Verweiszeichen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - μνεία ή παράθεση (κειμένου κ.λπ.), αναφορά, σχέση, υπαινιγμός, (βιβλιογραφική κ.λπ.) παραπομπή, σύσταση, συστατική επιστολή, πιστοποιητικό, αυτός που δίνει τη σύσταση, ο εγγυητής
v. - αναγράφω τις παραπομπές σε πηγές (π.χ. σε βιβλίο)
prep. - αναφορικά προς

idioms:

  • for future reference    για κάθε μελλοντική χρήση
  • reference book    βιβλίο αναφοράς, λεξικό ή εγκυκλοπαίδεια, βιβλίο ευρετηριασμένων γνώσεων, βιβλίο οδηγός, σύμβουλος
  • reference library    εγκυκλοπαιδική βιβλιοθήκη
  • reference mark    (τυπογρ.) παραπομπή, σημείο παραπομπής

Italiano (Italian)
riferimento, referenza, consultazione, allusione

idioms:

  • for future reference    per riferimenti futuri
  • reference book    libro di consultazione
  • reference library    biblioteca di consultazione
  • reference mark    segno di rimando

Português (Portuguese)
n. - referência (f), menção (f), recomendação (f)
v. - fazer referência
prep. - com referência a

idioms:

  • for future reference    informação útil
  • reference book    dicionário, enciclopédia
  • reference library    biblioteca
  • reference mark    marca de referência

Русский (Russian)
ссылка, сноска, справка, рекомендация

idioms:

  • for future reference    для дальнейшего использования
  • reference book    справочник
  • reference library    библиотека справочной литературы
  • reference mark    знак сноски

Español (Spanish)
n. - referencia, consulta, mención, alusión
v. tr. - proveer de referencias

idioms:

  • for future reference    para consultar en el futuro, para que lo sepas en el futuro
  • reference book    obra de consulta
  • reference library    biblioteca de consulta
  • reference mark    llamada

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - hänvisning, syftning, referens(person)
v. - förse bok med hänvisningar
prep. - hänvisande till

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
提及, 参考, 参照, 涉及, 参考文献, 给...加上参考数目

idioms:

  • for future reference    供将来参考
  • reference book    参考书
  • reference library    参考书阅览室
  • reference mark    参考符号, 基准标记

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 提及, 參考, 參照, 涉及, 參考文獻
v. tr. - 給...加上參考數目

idioms:

  • for future reference    供將來參考
  • reference book    參考書
  • reference library    參考書閱覽室
  • reference mark    參考符號, 基準標記

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 언급, 참조, 문의, 관계
v. tr. - 참조사항을 붙이다, 참조문으로 인용하다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 言及, 参照, 参考, 照会, 照会先, 参考文献, 参照符, 委託, 論及

idioms:

  • reference book    参考書, 参考図書
  • reference library    参考図書館, 参考図書の蔵書
  • reference mark    参照符
  • terms of reference    委任事項, 調査事項

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) مرجع, صله, إشارة, ذكر, إسناد (فعل) يزود بالمراجع‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮מראה-מקום, עיון, אזכור, התייחסות, הערה, אפנייה, סימוכין, הפנייה, המלצה, ממליץ, רמיזה‬
v. tr. - ‮הוסיף (לספר) הפניות למקורות‬

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Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Philosophy Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
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