What is refer?

Famous quotes containing the word refer:

“An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

“Teenage girls are extremists who see the world in black-and- white terms, missing shades of gray. Life is either marvelous or not worth living. School is either pure torment or is going fantastically. Other people are either great or horrible, and they themselves are wonderful or pathetic failures. One day a girl will refer to herself as “the goddess of social life” and the next day she’ll regret that she’s the “ultimate in nerdosity.””
—Mary Pipher (20th century)

“To refer is not to assert, though you refer in order to go on to assert.”
—Sir Peter Frederick Strawson (b. 1919)