especially: the thing that a symbol (such as a word or sign) stands for
referentadjective
Examples of referent in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the WebThere’s a sense of theater which the public lives off and needs to a certain extent, to have referents.—Pablo Sandoval, Variety, 13 Dec. 2023 The question involves determining the referent of the pronoun or possessive adjective.—IEEE Spectrum, 19 Jan. 2015 In a pronoun resolution problem, the examples are ones that involve common sense in order to disambiguate the referent of the pronoun.—IEEE Spectrum, 28 July 2016 Just to use a word is to acknowledge the absence of its referent, as though language itself makes loss our theme and medium.—Matthew Gavin Frank, Harper's Magazine, 21 June 2023 Its originators wanted to escape their subservience to real-world referents and let shape and color act as a language all their own, like musical notes.—Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 5 May 2023 Academics and conceptual artists quivered with excitement after the news broke—referent, context, appropriation, etc.—Hernan Diaz, Harper’s Magazine , 10 Feb. 2023 Like most graphical widgets, tabs are metaphors whose referent has been largely forgotten.—Meghan O'Gieblyn, WIRED, 28 Mar. 2023 To sum it up in one sentence: the original writing systems began with mostly pictorial characters that resembled their referent, and over time became more efficient and abstract, including a greater number of signs that represented sounds and semantic information.—Bridget Alex, Discover Magazine, 2 Jan. 2019
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'referent.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Etymology
Latin referent-, referens, present participle of referre
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