référer

Learned borrowing from Latin referre.

• IPA^(key): /ʁe.fe.ʁe/

• Audio:

  (file)

référer

1. (transitive) to refer (someone) [with à ‘to someone/something’]
2. (pronominal) to refer [with à ‘to someone/something’]
   • 2015, René Moulinier, “Tactiques de vente gagnantes”, in Winning Sales Tactics, page 9:

     À vous maintenant de faire de ce livre un outil de formation personnelle professionnelle performant. N’hésitez pas à le lire en plusieurs fois, et référez-vous-y chaque fois que vous devez préparer vos visites.

     Now it is up to you to make this book an effective professional personal training tool. Do not hesitate to read it in several installments, and refer to it each time that you have to prepare for your visits.

This verb is conjugated like céder. It is a regular -er verb, except that its last stem vowel alternates between /e/ (written 'é') and /ɛ/ (written 'è'), with the latter being used before mute 'e'. One special case is the future stem, used in the future and the conditional. Before 1990, the future stem of such verbs was written référer-, reflecting the historic pronunciation /e/. In 1990, the French Academy recommended that it be written réfèrer-, reflecting the now common pronunciation /ɛ/, thereby making this distinction consistent throughout the conjugation (and also matching in this regard the conjugations of verbs like lever and jeter). Both spellings are in use today, and both are therefore given here.

• référence
• référencer
• référent
• référentiel

• German: referieren

• “référer”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.