Referral

//ɹɪˈfɜː.ɹəl// noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act or process of transferring someone or something to another, of sending by reference, or referring. countable, uncountable

    "The insurance company insists I get a referral from my regular doctor. I can't just go to the specialist; a GP has got to refer me."

  2. 2
    the act of referring (as forwarding an applicant for employment or referring a matter to an appropriate agency) wordnet
  3. 3
    A document used by schools detailing some form of a student's misbehavior and listing the actions taken before and after the student's receipt of the referral. countable, slang, uncountable

    "After misbehaving in class, George was given a referral for disrupting class and sent to the office."

  4. 4
    a recommendation to consult the (professional) person or group to whom one has been referred wordnet
  5. 5
    a person whose case has been referred to a specialist or professional group wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
mentionreference

Example

More examples

"People usually only see a medical specialist like a urologist or a gastroenterologist after an initial referral by their primary healthcare provider."

Etymology

From refer + -al.

Related phrases

referral marketingreferral spam

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.